Call it a policy of diminishing returns or retreats from a worsening climate crisis.
We’re never going to sway the Trump administration on its decision to short circuit the Clean Power Plan.
But technological trends and markets might, not to mention the power sector continuing to decarbonize faster than expected.
Yet, last week the Trump administration finalized its so-called Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.
Our first question to those who put politics and self-interest above competitive markets is: How can we ever expect to win a war against the primary laws of economics?
You know, if there’s a demand, someone will provide the supply, as long as the incentives are high enough.
And why even if Longview Power’s president and CEO, that operates the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired plant in the world, according to him, says it’s probably the last of its kind why think otherwise? Especially when he tells you next thing that’s why Longview is developing an advanced gas-fired combine cycle plant beside its coal plant.
Finally, why would you ignore gains, that by some estimates show our country is already anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the way to meeting the Clean Power Plan’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030?
After all, aren’t happy days here again for the economy, despite the nation’s utilities already having drastically lowered emissions.
Most have no delusions about coal ever reaching the production numbers of the past and the outlook for this industry here and nationwide is uncertain, at best; grim, at worst.
Though some maintain you dance with the one that brought you, natural gas ditched coal more than a decade ago. More exactly, the advent of fracking around 2008 was to natural gas production what Elvis was to rock ’n’ roll.
But that was hardly the only front where the “war on coal” was waged.
Increased use of renewables; heightened energy efficiencies; volatile international markets; and the depletion of thick, easy-to-mine seams all followed.
The decline in the coal industry is relentless, and though this decline may be slow and drawn out it’s just a matter of how low must it go.
We reject any efforts, and hope courts do too, to roll back carbon restrictions, especially with the concerns about the amount of methane in the atmosphere.
Our country and our planet has a lotto lose, including our health, if we fail to address climate change.
Rewrite the rules however you want, but any notion of coal’s resurgence is contrary to the way markets work and technology advances.
The ACE is certainly no ace in the hole for the coal industry.
Indeed, it can only dig it and us into an even deeper one — at our own peril.
