| A group backed by the coal industry and its utility allies is waging a $35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change.
Americans for Balanced Energy Choices has spent $1.3 million on billboard, newspaper, television and radio ads in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.
A TV ad shows a power cord being plugged into a lump of coal, which it calls "an American resource that will help us with vital energy security" and "the fuel that powers our way of life."
Half of U.S. electricity comes from coal-fired plants, says the ad.
The group has also deployed teams on the campaign trail.
The group's message that coal-fired power plants can be clean, and that more of them are needed to meet the growing demand for electricity.
Opposition to new coal plants is mounting because they generate greenhouse gases.
Last year opposition prompted U.S. companies to abandon or postpone plans to build dozens of new coal plants.
The ads being run by Americans for Balanced Energy Choices talk about "clean coal."
New power plants are cleaner than they used to be because they must meet more stringent federal regulations limiting such pollutants as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide.
Unfortunately, climate change is linked to carbon dioxide emissions, which are not yet regulated.
Those emissions have dropped modestly as plants have become more efficient.
The new newspaper ads avoid that distinction.
They say that today's carbon-fired plants are "70 percent cleaner based on regulated emissions per unit of energy produced."
New coal-plant technologies that might capture carbon dioxide and store, or sequester, it underground are expensive, experimental and not in commercial use.
Many environmentalists argue that until that time, the United States should focus on renewable energy such as solar and wind.
Coal advocates say those energy sources cannot be relied on 24 hours a day and cannot be easily stored.
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