Industrial Restructuring and the United States Coal-Energy System, 1972–1990: Regulatory Change, Technological Fixes, and Corporate Control

Abstract

In the past three decades the coal-energy system in the United States has undergone significant restructuring in location, technology, and organization. During the 1970s and 1980s the quadrupling of oil prices coupled with changing relations of production, legislative action for environmental protection, and deregulation in coal transportation initiated major reorganizations of the movement of coal from mines to electricity-generating plants. In this paper a three-part analysis examines the corporate and regulatory processes influencing coal flows during restructuring. Part one describes intrastate flows using coal-recepts from power plants. Part two identifies the changing spatial relationships in the coal-energy system between 1972 and 1990 using a dyadic factor analysis of interstate coal flows. Some origin-destination pairs responded rapidly to changes in coal demand. Others lagged behind until coal production or consumption facilities were developed under new financial and regulatory conditions. Drawing on contemporary and traditional perspectives of industrial reorganization, part three interprets the varying geographic responses of the U.S. coal-energy system and links the industry's restructuring to an emerging coordination of decision making between public and private interests in production, distribution, and consumption. Beyond the well-established shift to western coal fields and the rise of utility consumption associated with population growth, the analysis provides evidence of the grafting of increasingly influential national economic and political forces on to local and regional control of coal production and consumption.

Key Words:

• coal-energy system
• coal flows
• dyadic factor analysis
• industrial restructuring