By Taylor Kuykendall

Over the next three years, Michael Bloomberg's Bloomberg Philanthropies will inject another $30 million into the Sierra Club's efforts to move the U.S. away from coal as the organization raises its target to replace half of the nation's coal generation by the end of 2017.

Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, told SNL Energy that the new round of funding from the campaign's largest donor will allow the organization to continue to direct money to grassroots campaigns against coal production and coal-fired power generation. According to the Beyond Coal campaign site, the group says "we retired" 77,662 MW of coal-fired electricity with 265,350 MW left to go.

"From mountaintop removal mining to coal ash spills to air pollution to climate change — people are very concerned about coal for a whole host of reasons and all of those folks are part of the Beyond Coal campaign," Hitt said. "I came to this work because I grew up in Appalachia and I was originally trying to stop mountaintop removal. That's what got me into doing this work, and other people are doing it because their child has asthma or they were downstream from a coal ash spill."

The donation follows Bloomberg Philanthropies' first major gift to the organization of $50 million over four years announced in 2011. In that announcement, Michael Bloomberg, one of the world's richest men and a leading advocate for action on climate change, said "ending coal power production is the right thing to do" and riled the industry when he called coal a " dead man walking" in 2013.

"I think one indicator of this big transformation that we're in the middle of was the news that for the first time global carbon emissions stayed flat even as the economy was growing," Hitt said. "That was largely because of the reduced use of coal and the increased use of renewables in the developed world and China. … I think it has as much to do with all of these grassroots activists as anything else."

Representatives of the coal and coal power industry heavily criticized Bloomberg's gift, suggesting that the gift was "misguided" and would lead to increased electricity costs and higher unemployment. Several in the industry said Bloomberg Philanthropies' donation would have been more effectively used if directed at carbon capture technologies.

Controversy over Bloomberg Philanthropies' work to retire coal plants, including an announcement that the organization would be involved in a $48 million initiative to help states cut power plant emissions, led former U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to quit the organization's board of directors. Chao, who joined the board months after Bloomberg Philanthropies' first gift to Beyond Coal, is the wife of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., an active supporter of the coal industry in Congress.

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign has proven a formidable opponent to the industry — it spent $27 million fighting the industry in 2013 and roughly the same amount in 2012. Bruce Nilles, senior campaign director of Beyond Coal, told SNL Energy in late 2014 that it projected it would spend roughly the same amount in 2014 and even more in 2015 in a bid to end coal use by 2030.

Hitt said that Bloomberg's donation represents about 30% of the Beyond Coal campaign's total budget.

“It's not Washington or Wall Street that's driving this transition. I would argue that it is Main Street.”

 Mary Anne Hitt, director, Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign

"The prior grant from Bloomberg allowed us to really ramp up and expand our Beyond Coal campaign to try to meet a target of securing retirement of a third of the nation's coal generation and replacing that with clean energy," Hitt said. "That was a goal that we set back in 2010 and our goal was to meet that by the end of 2015. We are on our way. We're not there yet, but we still have a few more months."

Hitt said that the 77,662 MW of retired coal generation has occurred since 2010 and the organization is aiming to hit 105,000 MW of retired or announced to retire coal generation by the end of the year.

While the campaign largely measures its success by coal-burning power plant retirements, the funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies also allows the campaign to spend money on the Sierra Club's extensive efforts to fight coal at the production level as well — including legal actions that have proven very costly for coal companies in recent years. Hitt said whether it is funding a lawsuit, paying to ensure enforcement of environmental regulations, or just buying pizza for a community meeting to promote local involvement, the ability to put resources into the hands of local activists will lead to continued declines in coal-fired power generation.

"It's not Washington or Wall Street that's driving this transition," Hitt said. "I would argue that it is Main Street. … I have seen again and again regular people — city council members, teachers, doctors, nurses, parents — lead and win these campaigns to improve the health and quality of life in their communities. I think sometimes that is an under-recognized part of the story about this big energy shift we're seeing in the U.S. and around the world. It's a lot of pretty heroic and regular Americans who I would argue is the driving force making it happen."

The coal industry, meanwhile, may be finding it increasingly difficult to fund much of a fight against the Sierra Club and other coal activists as weak coal markets have several major coal companies on the ropes. Lobbying expenditures from major U.S. coal companies are down sharply as coal advocacy organizations pivot to grassroots efforts to promote the industry. Other industry efforts to promote coal include campaigns such as the Advanced Energy for Life initiative sponsored by Peabody Energy Corp., which promotes the increased use of coal as a moral action to reducing global energy poverty.

While markets for both thermal and metallurgical coal remain persistently weak, coal producers have regularly reported quarterly losses, mounting debt and shrinking market capitalization. The industry has also suffered from high-profile environmental incidents such as Duke Energy Corp.'s spill of an estimated 30,000 to 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River in North Carolina.