The U.S. just took its biggest step yet to end coal mining

 

In one of its biggest steps yet to keep fossil fuels in the ground, the Biden administration announced Thursday that it will end new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, which produces nearly half the coal in the United States.

Climate activists have long pushed the Interior Department to stop auctioning off leases for coal mining on public lands, and they celebrated the decision. It could prevent billions of tons of coal from being extracted from more than 13 million acres across Montana and Wyoming, with major implications for U.S. climate goals.

A significant share of the nation’s fossil fuels come from federal lands and waters. The extraction and combustion of these fuels accounted for nearly a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions between 2005 and 2014, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey.

In a final environmental impact statement released Thursday, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management found that continued coal leasing in the Powder River Basin would harm the climate and public health. The bureau determined that no future coal leasing should happen in the basin, and it estimated that coal mining in the Wyoming portion of the region would end by 2041...more