Consider This from NPR - Wind Power Is Taking Over A West Virginia Coal Town. Will The Residents Embrace It?

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Keyser, West Virginia, was once known for coal. But the jobs have been disappearing. First because of automation, then cheap natural gas. And now, the urgency to address climate change is one more pressure on this energy source that contributes to global warming.Now the town, like so much of the country is attempting to transition to renewable energy. The country's first major climate policy, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, gave that transition a boost. It passed with the key vote of West Virginia's own Senator Democrat Joe Manchin.Keyser represents a national shift in American energy production. And in a town that was defined by coal for generations, change can be difficult.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Royal Restaurant has been serving breakfast in Kaiser West Virginia for 120 years. And for as long as anyone can remember, the round table near the front window has been the place old men gather in the morning to talk about whatever's on their mind. We discuss anything from local to national news and politics and sports, you name it. A sign hangs on the wall over Chris Petzl's head. It says, Knights of the Royals Roundtable, where lies are told and repeated. But not just anyone can be a knight.

As Petzl explains, you have to earn the title by completing a very specific mission. You have to tell a lie that is believed, that goes out on the street and comes back as a truth. Tell a lie that goes out on the street and comes back with people believing it's true. He's been sitting at this table every morning for about 40 years, and it took him decades to come up with the lie that would earn him a knighthood. It happened after a row of wind turbines went up on the ridge overlooking the town in 2012.

What was the lie about them? The windmills was a government weather experiment. They were put up there to keep track of the moisture in the ground. When it was too wet, they pushed the clouds away. When it was too dry, they turned them and had the moisture come in. Now, ever since he put the windmills in, it's been Pleasant Valley. So you started that lie at this table and it came back to you as the truth?

Oh, it's all over town. It's everywhere. Congratulations. It's been for years. Congratulations. In fact, those wind turbines are producing electricity. Kaiser West Virginia was once known for coal, but the jobs have been disappearing

first because of automation, then cheap natural gas, and now the urgency to address climate change is one more pressure on this energy source that contributes to global warming. On the morning we visited, the Knights of the Royals roundtable were talking about the trains that used to run through town carrying coal from the mines to the big cities. Now there's only, what, three tracks at one time? There was ten tracks coming through town. Consider this. Kaiser West Virginia represents a national shift in American energy production. And in a town that was defined by coal for generations, change can be difficult.

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Wednesday, February 21st. It's Consider This from NPR. In Kaiser, West Virginia, you can see a shift the entire country is experiencing towards renewable energy. The country's first major climate policy, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, gave that transition a boost. It passed with the key vote of Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia. Like many towns in this state, Kaiser used to depend on coal. This railroad track running through the center of town ran nonstop with coal trains. Right now, it's quiet. But on the snow-capped mountains in the distance, a long row of wind turbines slowly spin in the breeze.

You can see the turbines and the railroad tracks from the window of Queens Point Coffee Shop, where I met Kaiser's mayor, Damon Tillman. Energy is huge in this town, and without it, we wouldn't have very much. Mayor Tillman grew up in Kaiser. He's been head of the city government for six years, and he says lots of people here who didn't work directly in the coal mines still had jobs that depended on the industry, like on the railroads. But that all started disappearing with automation.

By the time renewable energy came along, the coal industry was already a fragment of what it had been. And today? It's gone. I mean, the coal industry is about phased out. It struck me last night just at the hotel, at the place we ate dinner. You could see the people who work in coal mines because they had black dust on their face and hands and clothes. It's almost like your trophy saying, hey, I worked hard for the day. Yeah. You know, and I just want something to eat and go home. And how much of that is also just

about identity? Like this is who we are and who we've always been. It is. It's part of that Appalachian Mountain thing. You know, I think people are very proud of who they are and where they're from. I'm curious, you know, with the support of Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the Biden administration got the Inflation Reduction Act, which has a lot of federal money coming to places like West Virginia to transition towards clean energy. So on the one hand, you're getting money and jobs and tax benefits. And on the other hand, you're getting a push away from what has been the energy source for this state for a very long time. How do you balance those two things? Well, that's true. But let me say this first is, yes, Joe Manchin did

get a lot of it. And I like Joe. I mean, I talked to him a good bit. But the thing is, a city like Kaiser don't ever see any of that money. Hardly ever will we see any money from that. I mean, just to be blunt, do you wish he had voted against it? I do. I do. And what does he say when you tell him that? Well, I never told him that. So, Joe, if you hear me, there you go, bud.

He's seen how the people in Kaiser live. You know, I'm not saying we are poor people. I'll tell you, we're proud people. Like the Davidson Brothers, you know, that's a band from Bridgeport, West Virginia. You know, they got a song out called Po' Boys. From the beat of towns all around Nothing but dirt and hand-me-downs It ain't our choice We're just Po' Boys Well, we're just the po-boys of college.

We requested an interview with Senator Manchin, who has announced his retirement. He declined to talk to us. We've driven up a winding road to the top of the ridge where it looks like you're in the snow globe. All of the trees are covered in white and above us you can actually hear the wind turbines spinning. My whole family worked in coal.

Doug Vance is a manager on this wind farm, and he represents the energy shift that the entire country is experiencing right now, away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels that have caused climate change towards renewable energy that can slow global warming. I was in a fuel preparation plant, and that's where I worked for quite a number of years before transitioning into wind in 2008. And boy, you I worked for quite a number of years before transitioning into wind in 2008. And boy, you can really feel the wind right now. It really is windy today. Why

don't we duck into the car and continue the conversation with less wind? The Biden administration often talks about what it calls a just transition for people moving out of work and fossil fuels, doing right by people losing their jobs. And clean energy projects from the Inflation Reduction Act are disproportionately going to red states. But the thing is, processing coal requires many hands, which means lots of jobs. Renewables like wind and solar are just not as hands-on. But I think that's that way in every industry. You know, artificial intelligence and automation and things like that have taken a lot of the place of manual labor. What Doug Vance

says is true. The industry had been shrinking dramatically for decades, long before turbines first showed up on this ridge in 2012. How many people work here for this wind farm. We have six full-time employees, and then we have a lot of supporting contractors when we have outages and we do substation electrical work. Six sounds like a very small number, I've got to say. It is. It's a small number. Economist Mark Curtis at Wake Forest University in North Carolina has studied this shift in the workforce. And, you know, we found that of workers that were leaving fossil fuel jobs, certainly less than 2% ended up in a renewable energy job. So it's not a lot. And in a place like West Virginia, it was even smaller than that. You know, approximately a quarter of a percent of workers that left fossil fuel jobs were going

to renewable energy jobs. So people like Doug Vance might represent the country's shift from fossil fuels to renewables, but he doesn't represent the workforce. He's the lucky exception who got a job in wind. And researcher Eleanor Krause points out another challenge. She's a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard who's heading to a teaching job at the University of Kentucky. Coal mining employment happens where coal mines exist. And these coal mines aren't necessarily the same places where the wind blows and the sun shines the brightest. And so it's not necessarily the case that we can just sort of replace coal mines with wind turbines or replace coal mines with solar panels to provide alternative

sources of energy production and alternative sources of jobs. And Krauss says there's another thing many people get wrong about coal. For the most part, renewables are not the reason those jobs went away. But then there's the visual. Natural gas fracking just doesn't cut a silhouette over town the way wind turbines twirl on the ridge over Kaiser. This is Metro News Talk Live with Hoppy Kirchival. Hoppy Kirchival has been broadcasting to the people of his home state for nearly 50 years. He hosts the daily program Talk Line on West Virginia Metro News. So if anybody has a read on how people in this state are feeling, it's him.

I think a realization has begun to set in that coal was declining anyway. But it's always very emotional because so many people in the state are connected in one way or another to these traditional energy sources. How do you think people generally view the Inflation Reduction Act? What do you think the prevailing view of that legislation is? Manchin was seen as selling out to Biden and his fellow Democrats. And politically, that hurt him. But at the same time, the practical aspect is there's all this green energy money that's coming to West Virginia

and the last two years has seen more economic development announcements than I can remember in this state. So on one hand, you have political leaders and others and community leaders who are more than willing to be at the groundbreaking and the ribbon cutting, but at the same time, politically denounce or be critical of the Inflation Reduction Act. That is the paradox of that. And that is part of the divide that Callie Dayton is trying to straddle. She's external affairs manager for Clearway, the energy company that owns the Pinnacle Wind Farm. So a big part of her job is listening to the

community. And she's from here. She grew up right outside of Kaiser. We talked to her as we walked down Kaiser's main street. There's concerns sometimes, obviously, about safety, you know, viewshed, things of that nature. You said viewshed. That's like looking at the horizon and seeing the turbines. Yeah. So for me, they're really interesting. I don't remember really life without those turbines up on the mountain. And they just, I think, serve as a testament to our efforts in the community. We've made a huge effort to make sure that people understand what's in their backyard. Further down Main Street, Sheila Wagoner is about to climb into her car. Her father used to be a railroad engineer moving coal.

She's 71, grew up in Kaiser, and she misses the way things used to be. I really don't care for those windmills. Why not? I guess I wasn't brought up with that kind of society. Like, 50 of them together, who likes all that? I mean, if you had one here and there staggered out, it wouldn't be so bad. So what do you think when you look up and see that?

Oh, my. Just then, a train horn sounds, and it's a rare sight. Cars full of coal. As we watch them rumble by, Sheila Wagoner gets a little emotional. Does that remind you of the old times, seeing those coal cars roll by? Yeah, those memories are good memories. My dad passed at 64, but it was from working hard. The science on this transition is clear.

If humans hope to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, we have to switch tracks quickly, from carbon-emitting fossil fuels that warm the planet to renewable energy like wind and solar. But even among people in West Virginia who support wind projects, it's hard to find anyone who talks about it in the context of global warming. One exception? Josh Bowes. I was born on Earth Day, and so since I was a kid, every birthday it was always at least some essence of Earth Day theme. He decided to change careers from contracting and construction, and now at age 31, he's in his last semester of a two-year program at Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College. He's learning to be a wind

turbine technician. I want to stay here, and I want to see our state move forward. His classmates take a less idealistic approach. So does his teacher, Isaiah Smith, who was just turning 23 on the day we visited. I guess the best way I can put it is, my feelings don't matter that much. What matters is price, and if you can give people power that's cheaper and cleaner, why would they pay more money for coal? Because that's really what it's coming down to. As Isaiah Smith puts it, we are past the point of feelings.

It comes down to money, and money runs the world. This episode was produced by Kat Lonsdorf and Michael Leavitt. It was edited by Tinbeat Ermias. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.