Can Broadband Replace Coal in Kentucky?

State officials in Kentucky are growing more optimistic about high-speed Internet access helping to supplant coal jobs lost in the “Silicon Holler” of eastern Kentucky. The Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) initiative hosted its third-annual summit on June 6 in Pikeville’s East Kentucky Expo Center. “There’s never been a greater necessity for invention, innovation, finding ways to supplement the coal industry,” US Rep Hal Rogers (R-KY) told more than 1,000 Kentuckians at the summit. Coal production in Kentucky dipped last year to its lowest point since the Great Depression, according to the state Energy and Environmental Cabinet. The state’s coal industry lost 27.7 percent of its workforce in 2015. Less than 6,000 eastern Kentuckians are now employed by the coal industry, down from 14,381 in 2008, per the cabinet.