Yesterday morning, Murray Energy, the largest privately owned coal company in the country, became the eighth coal company this year to file for bankruptcy. Bob Murray, its namesake CEO, had been pushing the Trump administration to bail it out. Those efforts appear to have been in vain.
Apparently, there’s no amount of corruption that can overcome how cheap renewables (and gas) are compared to coal, particularly combined with regulations that force the coal industry to internalize some of the externalized costs of its pollution.
But don’t take our word for it--just check out the bankruptcy filing! It describes how “difficult market conditions have been driven by changes in legislative priorities, commercialization of shale gas, wind, solar and nuclear electric generation subsidies, and low-cost natural gas exports.”
It notes how total installed capacity of coal power has fallen from 26 percent in 2013 to 20 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, gas and renewables’ share of capacity have climbed “from 59 percent in 2013 to 67 percent in 2019.” In terms of total generation, coal has fallen from 35 to 27 percent, while gas and renewables have climbed from 42 to 48 percent.
The situation is even more grim for coal, and good for the climate, in the PJM power market where Murray’s customers are concentrated. That area has seen the retirement of 19 gigawatts of coal power, a 27 percent reduction since 2013, along with a 30 percent increase in gas and a 50 percent increase in renewables.
The filing doesn’t exactly blame Trump when considering the impact of overseas markets, but it does place some blame on his pro-gas policies, which have allowed Europe to import US gas instead of coal. That, combined with the coal imports from Russian and “difficult regulatory environment in Western Europe,” has not been good for the business of burning rocks for energy.
The filing also states that “Murray maintains its belief that longer term demand for coal is underpinned in the United States by a practical requirement that approximately 25 percent of the power supplied to the electrical grid comes from coal power generation.” It’s unclear what evidence there is for this claim, which is perhaps why it’s referred to as a “belief”...
This will make it interesting to see how Trump talks about the coal industry in future events and campaign speeches. He obviously can’t claim to have saved it, given that his biggest coal baron booster has filed for bankruptcy. And this is despite having a former Murray lobbyist Andrew Wheeler running the EPA, Murray personally presenting Rick Perry with a wishlist of policies to save his company, and the hefty sums Murray spent supporting Trump.
So in the immortal words of Mr. Nutterbutter: Eat shit, Bob.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories: