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As the United States prepares for a new president in January, it may also be gearing up for a surge of spending on infrastructure, from highways to bridges to power plants. What’s needed in each case is steel, which is made with metallurgical coal.

 

While Democrats usually think such projects are a good deal, Republicans have often been hesitant. The irony now is that if Donald Trump's vague campaign proposals for an infrastructure blitz fail to come to fruition, it would kill off the coal industry's best hope for a comeback, something that the president-elect promised to bring about as well.

 

Metallurgical coal is primarily sold to steel mills and is baked until it's refined into coke, which is then burned to smelt iron.

 

“Metallurgical coal is used to make 70% of the world’s steel,” says Benjamin Sporton, chief executive of the World Coal Association. “With the new Trump administration committing to improving U.S. infrastructure, this will no doubt lead to increased demand for steel and the coal it is made from.”

 

Steel offers the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any commonly used construction material and is exceptionally durable. The coal association says that world crude steel production was 1.6 billion tons in 2013. Every type of power plant uses steel, it says, and 80% of a wind turbine is comprised of it.

 

It’s one thing to advance the notion of more infrastructure. It’s quite another to actually get the funds to build those roads, bridges and seaports. Part of the Obama administration’s prescription to get the nation out of the 2008 recession blues had been to invest the national treasure into those projects — things that were roundly lambasted by conservatives, who called them makeshift programs that only sent the nation further in debt.

Source:FOrbes