One of Donald Trump’s keys to “making America great again” was bringing back the coal industry. Not so much for the coal or for the workers, but because it was a symbol. One of turning back the clock to an America where you could dump all the chemicals you wanted, where you could keep the minorities down, and where a man could grab what he wanted to grab and not be given any trouble about it.
“Dig coal!”, they’d shout at the rallies. But in truth, America is digging coal’s grave.
There are plenty of numbers out there to be cited, but perhaps the easiest way to grasp the trend is with a map. Carbon Brief has a great worldwide interactive map of coal-burning power plants, and I’ve taken the last complete map (2019) and compared that to the one from ten years ago (2010). The width of each dot represents capacity, and one dot usually means one physical unit, but in some cases more than one. If you can’t see the legend, yellow is operating, white is closing, orange is new, pink is under construction, and purple is planned.
Look at the United States, even before COVID-19.
Status of coal-burning power plants in the U.S., 2010 vs. 2019.
Does that look like a healthy industry to you? Show of hands: Who wants to invest in that? … Anybody? … It looks like a leaf with powdery mildew disease to me:
Lotta white dots on there
There’s no map for 2020 yet, but loads of individual cases to talk about already:
January 2020 began with two coal-fired generators in Montana shutting down for good. A few days later, a subsidiary of billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway committed to closing a coal unit in Arizona this year. The same week, an electric cooperative based in Colorado also pledged to shutter a New Mexico coal plant by the end of 2020. Two weeks after that, Arizona's biggest utility promised to retire its last coal plant seven years ahead of schedule.
"I feel a little like we were shot out of a cannon into 2020," said Evan Gillespie, western region director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign. The numbers tell the story: There are just 20 coal plants in the continental West whose owners haven't committed to fully retiring them by specific dates, data compiled by the Sierra Club and additional research by The Times show. That's compared to 49 coal-burning generating stations with units that are slated for closure or have shut down since 2010.
And that’s just in the West. The state of New York, for example, just closed its last remaining coal-fired power plant in March.
Then, of course, came COVID-19. It will be the knockout punch for more coal companies, who were already grasping the ropes:
Longview Power, which calls itself “one of the newest, most efficient and cleanest coal-fired power plants in the United States,” filed for bankruptcy April 14 — its second time since it started operating in 2011.
The West Virginia power plant blamed the move on low power prices caused by competition from cheap natural gas, a warm winter and the COVID-19 pandemic’s stamp on the economy.
A warm winter, huh? Did anyone else get a whiff of irony here in the building?
Attorneys for Ohio-based Murray Energy wrote in bankruptcy court filings this month that “after suffering through quite possibly the worst market environment in its 32-year history during the first quarter of this year,” the company is now facing an “unprecedented” drain from the economic impacts of COVID-19.
The nation’s largest private coal miner entered bankruptcy in October and has been unable to find a buyer. The company warned a federal bankruptcy judge earlier this month that it might be forced to liquidate if it can’t shed health care payments for retirees.
The company was founded by Robert Murray, a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump who has pressed the administration to bail out coal companies. In Pennsylvania, the company owns the nonproducing 84 Mine in Washington County.
Health care for retirees on the chopping block first, eh? Why, of course it is. And wow, tough noogies for Robert Murray, huh? Maybe Trump will let him golf a round at Mar-A-Lago at half price to make up for it. Mehh, actually he’ll just tweet that Melonhead Murray is incompetent, blame the coal industry’s collapse on him, and be done with it.
But there’s more:
[W]hile the mine workers’ union has petitioned the Trump administration for standards to prevent catching Covid-19 in cramped underground shafts, the government has not acted on the request, a union spokesman said.
All those miners sure looked good waving hard hats at Trump rallies, but I guess they aren’t politically useful anymore. Oh, well.
Even after energy demand goes back up next year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that coal production still faces a 2021 that will suck almost as bad as 2020:
And this year, for the first time, renewables will pass coal in terms of electricity generation, again per the U.S. EIA:
What are energy analysts saying about the coal industry’s prospects?
New York Times:
“The grid is changing so much faster than anyone expected,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “A decade ago, I was teaching my students that coal was the ‘baseload’ source that runs all the time, and solar was something you might sprinkle in if you want to pay more. Now coal’s been pushed to the margins, and it’s wind and solar that are the cheapest options.” [...]
“The less you use these plants, the more expensive they are to keep around,” said Seth Feaster, a data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. His group recently estimated that, by 2025, coal could make up 10 percent or less of the electricity generated in the United States.
Bloomberg:
“This unprecedented drop in demand is foreshadowing the grid of the future,” said Steve Cicala, an economics professor at the University of Chicago. The world is “getting an early look at what high penetrations of renewables will do.”
The Guardian:
Rob Jackson, the chair of Global Carbon Project, said the pandemic was likely to confirm that coal will never again reach the global peak seen in 2013: “Covid-19 will slash coal emissions so much this year that the industry will never recover, even with a continued build-out in India and elsewhere. The crash in natural gas prices, record-cheap solar and wind power, and climate and health concerns have undercut the industry permanently.”
Financial Times:
“We think that this whole situation of the pandemic will accelerate the decline of the coal industry,” said Ben Nelson, coal industry analyst at Moody’s.
[He] said utilities were shutting down coal power plants faster than planned. One example is Great River Energy, a Minnesota co-operative that in early May announced it would retire its 1,151MW Coal Creek power station in 2022, then add 1,100MW of wind energy the following year.
“And once they’re shut down, they’re not coming back again,” Mr Nelson said.
I’m not celebrating the fact that this is going to put people out of jobs, mind you. I know these people don’t have it easy. My own great-grandfather was killed in a coal-mining accident in the 1940s. Fractured skull.
There’s a very good piece in the small-circulation Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald by April Baumgarten about the Great River Energy plant shutting down and how it’s going to pull the rug out from under a community that has relied on coal for generations.
But coal is dangerous, deadly, polluting, and awful for the climate, and it’s long past time to move on. Instead of making empty promises to bring back the coal industry and then going golfing, we need to be serious about getting these workers training for rising energy industries like solar and wind. They’re not married to coal; they just want stable jobs.
Many of these people were duped into thinking Trump has the magic elixir. But all he’s got is hydroxychloroquine.
