Ongoing Projects

Dr. Pratt Rogers

Mining Safety

The primary objective of this project is to identify and evaluate realistic energy and economic transition pathways for a distressed coal region in Utah. Emery and Carbon counties, known as Utah’s Coal Country, represent a region whose economy has relied almost exclusively on coal mining and coal-fired power plants for decades. Emery County in particular faces challenges with changing economic circumstances from declining coal production and the future closures of power plants. Those plant closures, planned in 2031 and 2032, threaten hundreds of direct power plant jobs, hundreds more coal mining jobs, and even more indirect jobs that are closely tied to the region’s coal industry. The planned shutdowns come as the region is already experiencing employment declines, high unemployment rates, net outmigration, high poverty rates, and housing price depreciation. The planned closures of the two coal power plants will exacerbate these challenging economic conditions. This project outlines multiple asset and workforce transition options for both the power plants and the mines and will explore multiple aspects of these transition options including: (1) rigorous techno-economic analysis (TEA) of the energy assets, (2) an economic impact analysis, and (3) a detailed economic and workforce transition plan.