Trump made a big deal about saving the dying coal industry. “[We’re] bringing back jobs, big league. We’re bringing them back at the plant level. We’re bringing them back at the mine level. The energy jobs are coming back.”
But in recent weeks, owners of two coal-fired power plants announced they were going to cease operations, including the largest coal-fired facility in the western United States. They can’t compete with natural gas price, which “have made it more expensive to produce electricity at the facility than to purchase it from cheaper sources,” according to the Washington Post. It reminds me of my friend who sells novelty items on his website, but stopping because Amazon’s retail price of the same items is usually less than the price he pays to buy the items from manufacturers.
Trump’s ability to save the Navajo plant and others like it is limited, despite his rhetoric. Even if his administration follows through on its promises to relax regulations on the coal industry, those changes aren’t likely to change coal’s fading market.
And if the owners of coal-fired plants lose money when they operate their facilities, keeping them running makes little economic sense.
For some reason, Trump’s energy plan makes no mention of solar, “an industry that just added 51,000 jobs.” Maybe he could issue an executive order requiring solar panels to have coal burners on them to belch smoke.