Then the venting started. Several residents stood up and expressed frustration that the federal government has forgotten about a place struggling to replace the jobs and tax base that the coal industry once offered it.
“We get overlooked all the time,” said LuAnn Zak, assistant director of the Indiana County Office of Planning and Development.
“There’s nothing being put out to help energy workers,” said Aric Baker, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 459, which had represented roughly 120 workers now laid off from the Homer City Generating Station.
President Biden has repeatedly promised a “just transition” away from fossil fuels — and toward clean energy — for communities that have lost well-paying jobs from shuttered coal mines and coal plants. Indiana County, a deep-red county in a crucial swing state in the 2024 election, represents one of this pledge’s greatest tests.
To win Pennsylvania, Biden will need to convince voters in communities like this one that they won’t be left behind as the nation shifts to cleaner sources of power than coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. But many residents here support Donald Trump, who has vowed to ease environmental regulations if he returns to the White House, in the hopes the former president could resurrect the Homer City Generating Station.
Biden has sought to pair his ambitious climate policies — some of which could accelerate the closure of coal plants — with economic aid for coal country. Soon after taking office, he established the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization to help coal communities get federal money. His signature climate law also provides generous subsidies for clean-energy investments in these communities.
The Homer City plant struggled to compete economically with cheaper natural gas and renewable energy even before Biden set tough new limits on pollution from power plants. But some locals are confident that Trump can revive it.
“I think if he gets back in, you’ll see this coal plant open back up,” said Tom Roser, 72, who worked at the plant for roughly 40 years before retiring in 2014.
During the recent meeting, members of Biden’s Interagency Working Group offered to help residents apply for federal grant money. But Brian Anderson, the executive director of the working group, said in an interview that he understands why some Pennsylvanians are frustrated at the federal government. He said many in West Virginia, where his grandfather was a coal miner, felt the same way.
“I come from a coal family and an energy community, and part of what has happened is people feel left behind. They feel forgotten,” Anderson said. “They feel like, ‘Well, we closed a mine and you’ve just forgotten about us.’”
Anderson acknowledged that “we’re not going to be wildly successful in every single community that has a coal mine or a power plant close and, you know, stave off all job losses,” but added, “We’re doing everything we can to make sure that the private sector is investing there and that the federal government is not turning its backs on any of those communities.”
Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate adviser, said in a phone interview that areas that once hosted fossil fuel infrastructure are receiving a disproportionate share of investments in new clean-energy projects spurred by Biden’s climate law.
“From the campaign through the transition to his first day in office, the president has prioritized lifting up the communities that have carried us on their backs,” Zaidi said.
The tricky politics of coal
Like much of U.S. coal country, Indiana County has moved to the right in recent decades.
The area was once a Democratic stronghold, with union workers at local coal mines voting reliably blue. But after the mines started closing and the union workers found jobs elsewhere, the region began trending toward Republicans, electing Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R) in 2018.
Though the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers endorsed Biden’s reelection bid in April 2023, some members of the local chapter here blame Homer City Generating Station’s closure on the administration’s environmental rules. The United Mine Workers of America, which…
Read More: Trump is still courting coal workers. This county shows why it matters.