Coal ad blitz launches new spot as industry sees political gains

An advertising campaign that previously pushed the phrase "clean coal" launches new spots this week focused on jobs and low-cost power, the latest offering in a three-year, nearly $120 million effort to sell Congress and the White House on coal's future. Increasingly, there are signs that it is working.

Coal companies and utilities that use coal in the past year have won a number of gains. Top policymakers, including President Obama, are echoing a key message from the ads, that technology in the future could reduce coal's carbon pollution and keep coal a part of the energy mix.

The Obama administration last week created a task force charged with advancing five to 10 commercial demonstrations of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology by 2016. Obama told a White House gathering, "If we can develop the technology to capture the carbon pollution released by coal, it can create jobs and provide energy well into the future." That followed the inclusion in the stimulus bill earlier this year of $3.8 billion for research, development and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration projects.

"There's a reason companies do these campaigns," said Kenneth Green, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "It's because they tend to work."

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