Meet the “Coal-igarch” Jim Grech, CEO of Peabody Energy
On Friday evening May 23, officials at the Michigan-based utility Consumers Energy received an unusual order. Trump’s Department of Energy, citing a “national energy emergency,” ordered the J.H. Campbell coal plant on the shores of Lake Michigan, slated for June 1 closure, to remain open.
“What was surprising about this order is that nobody was asking for it,” said Dan Scripps, chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission, in an interview with The New York Times. Neither the utility nor the state requested this, and Michigan energy officials estimate that the additional cost to consumers of keeping the 63-year-old plant open will be $279 million annually.
On August 21, the Trump administration extended the order for an additional 90 days, the statutory maximum for such an emergency. These actions are an extraordinary and unprecedented federal intervention in state-level utility regulation—and a Trump era payback to the fossil fuel oligarchs who helped get him elected.
How is it possible that zombie coal plants, costly and polluting dinosaurs of a bygone era, could be resurrected for a second life? Only with the interventions of “coal-igarchs” like Jim Grech, CEO of Peabody Energy, can these energy relics remain. Peabody, formerly Peabody Coal, is a mining conglomerate, founded in 1883. It is a leading coal producer, operating 17 surface and underground mines and with 5,000 employees across the United States and Australia.
Yes, that Peabody. Singer John Prine, in his famous song, “Paradise,” recounts returning to western Kentucky to visit the mountain town where his father was raised, only to find a ghost town: “I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking. Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”
