“Japan and China are both leaders in renewable energy technology, yet instead of growing their share of the clean energy market, they are choosing to choke the planet by backing dozens of new coal-fired power plants around the world”, said Alex Doukas, senior campaigner at OCI. The largest coal companies in America, including Peabody Energy, have filed for bankruptcy.
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Under the Obama administration, Chinese companies found greater footing.
On the regulatory front Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has continued its war on coal and its plans to pump-out burdensome regulations continue unabated.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has been open with his view on climate change being a hoax and Trump has selected climate skeptic Myron Ebell to lead the EPA transition.
Throughout the country, hundreds of generating units once fed by coal already have been idled because of the Obama assault. “We’re going to bring it back”.
As many analysts have observed over the previous year, coal is in trouble. Or the EPA could go through the rule-making process to get rid of it, which would then likely face a legal challenge by environmentalists, he said.
That message resonated with voters – and with industry representatives.
But where Trump has been somewhat vague on oil and gas, he’s been positively exuberant about coal.
In a statement released yesterday, Walter McCormick, president of USTelecom, said his industry association looked forward to working with Trump to advance his commitment to infrastructure investment, particularly as it relates to investment in advanced telecommunications networks and services.
And the markets rallied. Gas has just half the carbon emissions of coal and, thanks to the us drilling boom, most of the country is now flush with new supplies. “China, India, and other economic competitors are racing to be the global clean energy superpower, and the United States doesn’t want to be left behind”. The summit was described as a historic moment, as the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases vowed to cut global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to climate change. Coal will not return to its old size and strength.
Demand for coal may also decrease in the near future, regardless of federal regulations.
Coal basins in Appalachia and the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming are hurting.
Trump wants to bring back coal. Just three years later, only 101 power plants bought 49.9 million tons of Kentucky coal. Coal has been stuck in a decline that even a pro-coal president, with assistance from Congress, may not be able to reverse.
When a utility builds a power plant, it has to live with that decision for decades.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which says the power plan would lead to higher power prices and threaten electric reliability, would disagree with that, as would most of the state’s Republican leaders, who have painted it as tremendous federal overreach.
The Washington Post reported that Ebell has long argued for opening up more federal lands to oil and gas exploration, logging and coal mining while shifting responsibility for permitting that action from the federal government to the states. “And that has resulted in substantial displacement of coal-fired generation for natural gas-fired generation”. California and NY, for example, will continue with their green policies, whatever the administration says. “Perhaps my trip is actually even more important now”, he said, and sounded nearly defiant.
“Most of the big factors impacting the energy industry have really been market-driven”.
Despite the positive response from the sector over a Trump win, the coal industry is unlikely to spring back to where it was a few years ago anytime soon. The Climate Analytics researchers acknowledge that there are now over 1,000 new coal-fired plants in construction or on the drawing boards around the globe.
Former president Mary Robinson was also in Marrakech following the publication of her blueprint paper on El Niño and Climate.
“We can guarantee him the hardest fight of his political life”, said Michael Bruene, executive director of the Sierra Club.
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As noted in the GOP platform: “The Keystone Pipeline has become a symbol of everything wrong with the current [Obama] Administration’s ideological approach, After years of delay, the President killed it to satisfy environmental extremists”. Meanwhile, the outgoing secretary of state, John Kerry – a driving force behind the United States’ progressive climate policy in recent years – is also awaited in Marrakesh. This move, he said, would ultimately give natural gas another competitive advantage against coal and make an industry comeback even less likely.
