Evidence that coal will play an important part in many near future political battles is coming out of Kentucky where a series of ads touting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are being financed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Associated Press reported that the business group will launch a TV ad on Dec. 3 touting the GOP leader as a champion of Kentucky's coal industry. The chamber is spending $180,000 to air the ad across Kentucky over the next 10 days.

"While the EPA and bureaucrats try to kill Kentucky's coal industry, Mitch McConnell is fighting back, fighting hard," the ad's narrator says.

McConnell is considered the most vulnerable Republican up for re-election in 2014. As he seeks a sixth term in Kentucky, the Senate's top Republican faces a GOP challenge on his right from businessman Matt Bevin, who has Tea Party support. Democrats are rallying behind Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes to take on McConnell in the 2014 general election.

President Obama has proposed a sweeping plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, in a bid to tackle climate change. McConnell and others from coal-producing states charge that Obama is waging a war on the coal industry with his climate-change plan.

"The people of Kentucky have a true conservative champion for American free enterprise in Sen. Mitch McConnell," Rob Engstrom, the chamber's political director, said in a statement. "We appreciate his efforts to fight back against the war on coal, and to protect Kentucky jobs from the harmful policies coming from Washington, D.C."