The Energy Information Administration hasn’t tallied the final two weeks of data, but it’s been clear for several weeks that 2018 was going to see a significant decline in coal consumption. The cold snap in the eastern U.S. during November provided a boost over earlier estimates, but coal is still exiting 2018 at levels that aren’t just lower than when Trump came into office, but lower than when Obama came into office. And when George W. Bush came into office. And when Bill Clinton came into office. And when George H. W. Bush came into office. And when Ronald Reagan came into office.
Last year, Donald Trump tried to take credit for a small increase in coal consumption, but that was just a barely notable bump in a very steep decline. In 2018, that decline continued, taking the total tonnage produced to levels not seen since 1979. Coal consumption in the United States is down by 44 percent in a decade.
Another way to see the insignificance of that 2017 “bump” is in employment. No state produces more coal than Wyoming, where seams up to 100’ thick allow coal to be mined at the lowest possible prices and shipped all over the country. According to the Casper Star Tribune the falling coal market in 2016 carried away 1,000 mining jobs from Wyoming. The 2017 improvement brought back … five. That’s five jobs across the entire state. Whether those five jobs survived the 2018 fall in production isn’t yet clear.
Nationwide, about 53,100 people were employed in coal mining—that’s all employees, not just the miners—in May of 2018. Since then, numbers have fallen by about 300, with the last two months of the year yet to be reported. That makes the whole industry far smaller than the 89,000 people who are still employed by bankrupt Sears when it comes to the lives of ordinary Americans.
That doesn’t mean that Trump isn’t still fighting for coal mine owners and power plant owners. Even if that means dumping more mercury into the environment.
The Trump administration is proposing that limits on mercury pollution from power plants are too costly to justify and no longer “appropriate and necessary,” a finding that could make it difficult to impose more stringent curbs in the future.
That language is specific to the requirements of the Clean Air Act, which calls on the EPA to restrict pollution where “appropriate and necessary.” By putting mercury outside that category, it opens the door to allow power plant operators to reduce the cost of using coal by allowing them to operate without systems that capture mercury. Coal power plants are already the second largest source of environmental mercury (gold mining is number one).
Why is Trump willing to allow power plants to drop a neurotoxin into the environment? Because the cost of operating a coal-based power plant is now higher than the cost of building new solar or wind power. Trump is doing everything to extend this dying industry to the last possible moment, so that friends of his like squirrel-whisperer Robert Murray can extract the maximum amount before declaring bankruptcy, walking away, and leaving taxpayers to pick up the cost of reclamation and the cost of health care for dying miners.
But he’s going to have to work fast to extract the last dimes for his pals.
The cost of building a new utility-scale solar or wind farm has now dropped below the cost of operating an existing coal plant, according to an analysis by the investment bank Lazard.