Why can’t Trump save coal? This is why.
Those are the cooling stacks for 1,200 megawatts of coal power going away. Because power companies do not want the expense that comes with coal. They don’t want to pay for the fuel, which is more expensive than gas or renewables. They don’t want to pay for the storing the tons of ash that are generated by burning coal. They don’t want to pay for capturing the ash that goes up the smokestack. They don’t want to deal with servicing the boilers in a coal-fired plant, that are more expensive to maintain. They don’t want to deal with the cost of restoring and maintaining plants that are decades old and crumbling, in no small part, from exposure to the chemicals created in handling and burning coal. They simply don’t want it.
That’s why coal companies closed dozens of coal-fired plants in 2017, and why that trend is continuing in 2018. It’s why Trump’s promise to “bring back coal jobs” is one of his biggest, and most cynical lies. Even with everything Trump and Scott Pruitt have done to cut regulations that protect clean air and clean water—cuts that will cost the lives of 88,000 Americans—coal is still failing. And Trump’s plan to force power companies to use coal using emergency powers reserved for military crises still won’t work. Because other forms of energy aren’t just cleaner. They’re cheaper to build, cheaper to use, cheaper to maintain.
Trump may dig campaign donations from coal mine owners all day, and they definitely dig the dollars he’s handing back to them. But coal is burned in coal power plants. And those are simply going away.