Harnessing The Sun In Coal Country
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id="article-body" class="row" section="article-body"> Crammed into a narrow river valley in the Appalachian Mountains, the city of Pikeville, Kentucky, feels closed off from the rest of the world. It's a sensation that starts miles away from town as I slowly drive a meandering road that climbs through the hills. Rough-cut cliffs of bare rock close in beside me, and a bobcat briefly trots alongside my rental car.
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Mark Mann Picturesque and tiny -- its population is just 6,700 -- Pikeville is the county seat of Pike County, Kentucky's easternmost point. Like many places in central Appalachia, it's historically a coal town, where Ross Harris Group, a family coal company that owns roughly 300,000 acres of land in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee, has been a fixture for more than three decades. Coal is still a significant part of its portfolio, but as the industry continues to decline, RH Group has diversified. I'm here to learn about one of its more surprising ventures, a 700-acre solar farm planned for two nearby mountaintops previously used to mine coal.
Though solar power may seem better suited for the flat deserts of the Southwest, RH Group has decided that moving beyond coal is critical for its survival. Ryan Johns, the company's vice president of business development, credits coal with powering the industrial revolution and making possible many of the machines we use today. He also knows the reality of a finite resource. Made of fossils millions of years old, coal isn't being replaced by more fossils once it's dug out of the ground. Coal mining, particularly strip mining, also can significantly mar the rugged beauty of nearby mountaintops and contaminate waterways with runoff from the work site.
By investing in a renewable energy project, Johns hopes to keep RH Group competitive in today's economy and save jobs in a rural part of the country that most renewable energy companies have ignored. Construction on the solar project has yet to begin, and the company has a fight ahead of it with the state government, but Johns is optimistic it'll succeed. "It's not about renewables versus coal," he says. If you have any queries concerning the place and how to use Https://Imvucreditsgenerator.pw/how-to-hack-imvu-Credits/, you can call us at our web page. "This is about doing what is right and taking a resource that has already been used [coal] and repurposing the land to keep creating jobs and keep producing energy for our country."
Enlarge ImageRyan Johns gazes out over an old mountaintop coal removal site -- land that will eventually become a 700-acre solar farm.
Tyler Lizenby/CNET Fossils
Johns drives me and my video producer, Tyler Lizenby, up into the hills surrounding Pikeville to the site where the solar farm will eventually be built. We're joined by Adam Edelen, founder of Edelen Ventures, a former Kentucky state auditor and a Kentucky gubernatorial candidate for 2019, and Kenny Stanley, RH Group's land agent. As we climb higher, Johns points out a darker section of rock embedded in a hill bordering the road -- that's coal, he says. We're literally surrounded by coal.
RH Group mines metallurgical and thermal coal here at both underground and mountaintop sites. Metallurgical, or "met" coal, goes into the steel that's in buildings and cars. Thermal coal is used for power generation. We ultimately reach an elevation of 1,600 feet.
It's a chilly, clear November morning with a view of Virginia to the east. Johns hands me a stray piece of coal from the ground, an artifact from an old mining operation that ended 15 years ago. It's lighter than I expected it to be, and more brittle; a piece breaks off easily while I'm holding it. Today the area is full of tall grass, which attracts elk and deer.
Johns points out the areas that will be covered in solar panels. While we talk, a couple of trucks pull up. Johns tells the drivers they're on private land, and they drive off. Not long after, we hear rifle shots in the near distance. Deer hunting season is still a few days away, so they're most likely getting target practice in beforehand.
