In November 2017, the Donald Trump administration announced a plan to employ emergency powers that had gone untouched since the Korean War in order to distort the energy marketplace in favor of coal. But as early as January of this year, Trump and designated point man Rick Perry found that even Trump-appointed regulators were unwilling to go for the plan that would force utilities to produce more power from coal and nuclear—even if it caused higher prices for their customers and generated more environmental damage. After 10 more months of trying to make this thing happen, including multiple announcements and schemes for its implementation, the proposal has lost so much momentum that Politico reports Trump and Energy Secretary Perry can’t even find enthusiasm for the plan among Trump’s White House staff.
The White House has shelved the plan amid opposition from the president’s own advisers on the National Security Council and National Economic Council, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.
The scheme required utilities to make a portion of the electrical grid “safer” by keeping 90 days worth of fuel on site. Since windmills and solar plants can’t stockpile the wind or sun, they were left out. And since natural gas power plants generally get their fuel from pipelines with only a small amount of on-site storage, even they were left out. Truthfully, the whole thing was a transparent scheme to slow the closing of coal plants. But it hasn’t worked. Coal was down from 50 percent of U.S. power in 2005 to 30 percent in 2017, and it has fallen at an even sharper rate in 2018 as more than 11 gigawatts of coal-fire capacity have gone offline.
TVA has already closed 32 of the 59 coal-fired units it previously operated and is now planning to close the last of its giant 1.1Gw coal-fired generators at Paradise, Kentucky, along with another unit in Tennessee. The reason for the closures: TVA has listed these coal plants as the least efficient, most expensive to operate, and most expensive to maintain.
At a recent rally in West Virginia, Trump again tried to argue that coal was both “clean” and somehow more “safe” than other forms of power.
Trump: We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal. You can blow up those windmills, they go down real quick. You can do a lot of things to those solar panels, but you know what you can't hurt? Coal.
Blowing up coal might be difficult, but coal on its own doesn’t make power. That takes coal-powered plants, which are as subject to sabotage as any other form of energy plant—even more so, since by their nature they are very large, and depend on specialized components. Dependence on large coal plants makes the system not just theoretically, but demonstrably, more vulnerable to both attack and simple maintenance issues. Coal also isn’t clean in any sense. The only plant that was supposed to use clean coal technologies switched to natural gas before it was even put in service.
Trump has done everything possible to try and give the failing coal market a boost. He’s taken the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, opened America’s streams and rivers for the dumping of coal waste, reduced the safety rules for coal ash, and eliminated plans to require plants to meet any standard for greenhouse gases. It is not enough.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports on just one of the mines that has closed this year.
A West Virginia coal mine that employs about 400 workers is closing after a deal to sell it fell through. … WVVA reports workers at the mine, which is owned by Mission Coal, said this week negotiations to sell the mine fell through. The mine is largest employer in Wyoming County after the school system. Workers were moving equipment out of the mine this week, a sure sign of its imminent closure.
States that bet on Trump’s ability to restore coal to a position it hasn’t held for decades are paying a huge price for that gamble. Even those mines that are remaining in business are losing jobs to automation as the declining market squeezes out all but the most efficient operators.
A desperate plan to turn West Coast military bases into coal export terminals over the wishes of the states where they are located might help retain a skeleton industry in some locations, but would produce a barely noticeable blip in coal’s decline. The longer that any location holds on to the idea that coal is going to form a major part of its economy, the greater the pain for that region.
Personal note: My mother helped to build that plant in Paradise, which is built on the site of a farm where my family lived for almost 200 years.