Bob King

Post image for For Natural Gas, the Other Shoe Drops

For years, certain natural gas producers, led by Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, have pursued a myopic strategy of demonizing coal in an effort to seize a larger share of the electricity generation market.

It started in 2008, when Chesapeake funded an unsigned “Dirty Coal” advertising campaign. It featured black and white photos of children, with coal smudged faces, looking sad. Having set the table with anti coal propaganda, McClendon then teamed up with the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope to implement a legislative strategy. The pair traveled around the country, pitching natural gas as the “bridge fuel” to a green energy future.

They scored one major success, in Colorado. There, ex-Governor Bill Ritter had made the “New Energy Economy,” the centerpiece of his administration. As such, he was receptive to fuel switching as a way to meet his Climate Action Plan, a non-binding mandate to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 2008 levels. As I’ve written about at length here, the Ritter Administration engaged in a number of deceptions to carry Chesapeake’s water.

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