Donald Trump’s War on Coal continues unabated as coal plants are closing at an increasing rate.
… by end-2017, owners of coal plants – which directly compete with gas in many areas of the country – had announced 12.5GW of planned retirements for 2018, foreshadowing the largest year for coal decommissioning since the 15GW of retirements in 2015.
That 15GW year was the record. Trump’s accomplishment of bringing down 12.5GW in 2018 will make him, appropriately enough, number two.
Unfortunately, this also means that more than 1,000 miners have lost their jobs since September, and with big declines coming through the end of the year, more loses are likely to follow in the near future. Although coal is falling, there are some growth areas.
Among sectors associated with electricity generation, solar employed the highest number of workers in 2016. The solar job count topped nearly 374,000, more than double those from fossil generation, which numbered 151,000 for coal, natural gas, and oil-fired sources combined (not counting employment associated with fuel supply). Solar is still a labor-intensive field and one where a boom in new installations is driving employment.
It’s not clear how Trump’s tariffs on solar panels will affect those numbers. The complaints that Trump said he was acting on came from two already bankrupt companies, and even though the complaint was exclusive to China, the tariffs are not. The likely result will be a cost increase of as much as 10 percent for solar projects in 2018 … with no projected benefit to the industry.
None of which will help coal or coal miners. Electrical production from coal declined 3 percent in Trump’s first year, and it’s going to decline even more in year two.
At the moment, only 4 gigawatts of coal plants are scheduled to be retired after 2018—a small amount considering the 30 percent of electrical generation still coming from coal. But those low numbers are deceptive. They don’t represent hope to salvage coal plants, so much as companies’ reluctance to indicate closures too far in advance.
Coal is being displaced by gas, by wind and by renewables. Which is leading to a result that would have Trump grinding his teeth—if anyone bothered to tell him.
The [electricity] sector’s emissions now sit at roughly 28% below 2005 levels – only 4 percentage points away from the 2030 target of 32% below 2005 put forward in the Clean Power Plan.
Trump repealed the Clean Power Plan, but it seems clear the electrical sector will not just meet, but exceed, the targets of that plan. All thanks to the magic of … competitive markets. Which Republicans hate, when those competitive markets don’t give them the results they want.
But don’t worry. Trump will soon claim he’s the greenest president ever. Ever. And take absolute credit for declining carbon dioxide. While claiming to create a million new coal jobs. Because who checks these things, really.