Coal Currents

Episode 1: The Obama War on Coal, PJM, and the Price of Energy PovertyThe Obama-era War on Coal didn't end when he left office — it just changed uniforms. T.L. Headley traces the policy lineage from those first EPA rules straight through to today's PJM grid strain, and lays out why the bill keeps landing on the same people every time: working families paying more to keep the lights on.This episode digs into the LCOE shell game — how "levelized cost of energy" gets used to make new renewables look cheap by comparing them against numbers that were never designed for that fight, while existing coal's real operating economics get buried in the fine print. Headley breaks down what energy poverty actually looks like on the ground in Appalachia, and connects the dots to a war on the other side of the world: how Persian Gulf instability ripples straight back into American energy security and the case for domestic baseload.Sharp, sourced, and unapologetically pro-coal. No hedging, no false balance — just the numbers and the argument.The Hedley Company