Growing energy costs will force changes in the ways we live and do business in the United States.
A lifelong leader in the coal and transportation industries, Charles T.
"Charlie" Jones believes Americans might have to give up their
free-traveling lifestyle, where some people drive 50 miles each way to
work every day and never think twice about making other daily
excursions.
"Some people are spending $200 a week to go to work. Can they stand
that over the long haul? No. People will have to move closer to their
jobs.
Charleston Gazette - Sunday, April 27, 2008
Growing energy costs will force changes in the ways we live and do business in the United States.
A lifelong leader in the coal and transportation industries, Charles T. "Charlie" Jones believes Americans might have to give up their free-traveling lifestyle, where some people drive 50 miles each way to work every day and never think twice about making other daily excursions.
"Some people are spending $200 a week to go to work. Can they stand that over the long haul? No. People will have to move closer to their jobs.
"You cannot spend that much on transportation if you also have to pay for food, clothing and a roof over your head," Jones said.
Trains are more efficient, but they cannot counter rising transportation costs everywhere.
Population density makes trains an economical mode of transportation in urban areas like New York, Boston and Philadelphia, Jones said. But they are not cost-efficient in most rural areas like West Virginia.
Many businesses also face huge cost increases.
Amherst Industries, one of his family's companies based in Port Amherst just east of Charleston, operates 35 tugboats along the Kanawha and Ohio rivers.
When a company tugboat pushes coal barges down the Kanawha to electric power plants, it consumes about 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel for every 105 miles it travels. Today, that costs more than $16,000.
Amherst Industries also transports limestone, chemicals, sand, gravel and other products on its barges.
Rising fuel prices are beginning to hurt other businesses as well.
Jones, a member of the Central West Virginia Regional Airport Authority's board of directors, said Yeager Airport in Charleston will begin losing flight passengers because rising fuel costs are increasing ticket prices.
That could also hurt rental car companies at the airport and local businesses, Jones said.
Jones, who will celebrate his 90th birthday June 4, believes the United States, and all other nations, must explore every possible option to handle rising costs and the exploding demand for fuel.
"We will have to use more natural gas. Today, we already import a lot from Canada. And Houston just built two new ports to handle LNG [liquefied natural gas] tankers."
Growing trade deficits, created by growing imports, continue to soften the American dollar. "A great fear is that oil producing countries might go to the euro."
Gas tax reduction
Jones vehemently opposes cutting gasoline taxes, as some have recently proposed.
"Personally, I am opposed to reducing any tax on fuels. It would be a miniscule reduction. Our roads and bridges are already in bad shape."
Today, the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon for gas that now costs $3.65 a gallon, or more. The West Virginia state tax is 32.2 cents per gallon.
Gas tax reductions would also cut jobs for construction and maintenance workers who build and repair highways.
"Look at our bridges. We have not painted them in 30 or 40 years. I don't think you can lower our expenditures on infrastructure," Jones said.
During the fiscal year that begins on July 1, gasoline taxes will generate about $380 million for the West Virginia state budget. All other related fees - including property taxes on vehicles and registration fees - will bring in less than $260 million.
Jones believes coal has "great potential" to continue providing for our future energy needs.
The U.S. is also shipping more and more coal to Europe, because of the "soft dollar," from ports like Newport News and Portsmouth on the Virginia coast.
"Spot [market coal] prices are so high and the Europeans will pay it."
Jones does not believe the federal government should dip into its own petroleum reserves.
"This concerns Air Force leaders. We don't have enough indigenous fuel for them to conduct and sustain an air war. Should we develop reserves we have that are untapped? There is a strong argument for that," Jones said.
Jones sees a dramatic difference between the days of World War II and current fuel shortages.
"In World War II, we supplied all the iron ore, coal and oil that the allies needed. But the Air Force was not using a lot of fuel back then."
The increasing production of biofuels is creating other problems, by raising the prices of corn and soy beans, said Jones, whose family has raised corn and beans on 175 acres along the Kanawha River for many years.
Rising corn prices, which doubled in the past two years, have already forced Monsanto to close its ethanol plant in Minnesota.
Jones also questions other recent proposals, including Gov. Joe Manchin's plans for a network of billion-dollar coal liquefaction plants in West Virginia.
Jones believes no one yet knows how to make those plants work without generating "extreme" pollution.
Future energy sources
Some potential coal, oil and natural gas reserves are still underground because of inefficient mining techniques and poor planning, especially in areas with several seams of coal.
"If you already mined an upper seam or a lower seam, it makes it impossible to mine the middle seam.
"We have a lot of everything left, but it will cost a lot more to get it. Technology is getting better and better. We already get a lot better recovery from oil fields."
Jones worries about the future.
"If these [oil] prices persist, our lifestyle will have to change, whether we like it or not. Is that good? I don't think it will be very good.
"Today, my hotel in Myrtle Beach is frequented by wage earners back here. But the cost of living will erode their disposable income."
Jones believes we need to develop more indigenous sources of energy to maintain our economy and independence.
"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin contributes 45 percent of all the energy that goes to Western Europe today. Russia has major energy resources, but [under Soviet rule] they wasted a lot of resources because of the way they mined coal, produced oil and pumped gas."
Jones believes we must increase the number of coal-fired plants and nuclear plants in our nation.
"We have 103 nuclear plants today. I would increase that number dramatically. But today, it takes four-and-a-half years to get a permit for a new coal plant and between 12 to 15 years to get a permit for a nuclear plant.
Population increases and new technologies create more demands for energy.
"Today, we have the fastest- growing population of any industrial nation. It is not the white population that is growing. There are a lot of Mexicans and Central Americans coming to the United States, as well as Asians."
New technology also increases demand.
"The Internet now uses 8 percent of all our electric power and up to 12 percent in some parts of the country."
Jones supports developing other sources of power, including solar power, wind power and river dams.
Calling hydropower the "most dependable renewable energy," Jones noted that dams can help regulate river flows and also create major recreational assets.
The Summersville dam recently put in power turbines. Other existing dams, such as the Sutton and Bluestone dams, do not have them in part because "the coal industry fought them tooth and nail."
Jones believes the state should build between 15 and 20 dams in the near future, while the country builds 50 nuclear power plants.
Even more disastrous problems face other countries, Jones said, pointing to the May 2008 issue of National Geographic, devoted to development in China.
"China is a huge contributor to pollution, especially from its coal-fired plants. Their problems are staggering. They are also running out of water."
China's energy demands also have a growing impact on the United States.
"Today, we purchase between 13 [million] and 14 million barrels of oil a day, while China purchases between 7 and 8 million barrels and India buys three million a day."
An active member of the Nature Conservancy, Jones has long advocated improving environmental conditions in areas like the Kanawha River itself, which was heavily polluted a generation ago.
"We need to think about conservation," he said.
After graduating with a business degree from Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., Jones worked at his family's Star Coal and Coke Co., which built Red Star, a company town near Thurmond on the New River.
He soon moved to Logan County to work at the family's Amherst Coal mining operations.
Jones enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1943 during World War II, serving as an equipment operator for the Seabees in Guadalcanal, then as an engineering officer off the coast of Japan aboard a minesweeper. His tour of duty also took him to Hiroshima.
Featured