Why Trump's Promises To Revive Coal Industry Are 24-Karat Bullshit

[hatrack]

EDIT

1. The fracking boom has led to a flood of cheap natural gas around the country, prodding many electric utilities to switch from coal to gas.

2. This has come right as US electricity demand has stagnated, putting further pressure on coal.

3. Various states like California and Oregon and New York are proactively turning away from coal and toward cleaner renewable energy as concern about global warming grows.

4. The Sierra Club has been actively thwarting the development of new coal plants and convincing utilities to close existing ones.

5. On top of that, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has enacted a number of strict air pollution rules — on mercury and sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide — that have raised costs for dirty coal plants and further accelerated this shift to gas and renewables.

Meanwhile, sagging Chinese steel production has weakened demand for metallurgic coal, pushing many mining companies into bankruptcy. Amid all this, Appalachia’s miners have been suffering disproportionately here, because:

1. Coal mining jobs continue to be mechanized and employment keeps falling, a trend that has been going on for decades.

2. Many of Appalachia’s best coal seams have been mined out, and operations are increasingly moving to the bigger, lower-sulfur coal deposits out West, in Wyoming and Montana.

There are a lot of interlocking factors here, and many of them aren't really affected by who's in the White House. So when Donald Trump says, "We're going to save the coal industry," as he did in May, we should be skeptical. The one thing Trump could do is repeal many of the EPA’s pollution regulations, and he’s promised to do just that. That might help slow coal's decline a bit (though at the cost of higher pollution). But it'd be unlikely to bring back most of those lost jobs, because all those other factors would still be in place. Crucially, natural gas is expected to have a cost advantage for years to come. And Trump actually wants to expand fracking and natural gas production — putting more pressure on coal, not less.

EDIT

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/19/12232316/donald-trump-coal-industry

[tonyt53]

1. Got a few clarifications and addidtions.

1. You left out the fact that self-professed oil man T. Boone Pickens is the one responsible for pushing natural gas for power production. He started lobbying Congress in 2005 for it. In 2006 the Bush EPA enacted some of the most stringent emission control standards ever placed on the coal-fired electrical generation industry. Those standards always have a 10 year compliance period. That time frame coincides with the closing of many of the coal-fired plants. TX has not permitted a traditional coal-fired power plant since 2004, and there have been many applications.

2. Yes, it has leveled off here in the US, but due mostly to more efficient air conditioning systems, better buildings, and th emove to more efficient lighting systems - the light thingy is also a Bush gift.

3. NY wasn't co much coal as it was heavy oil. The rising cost of oil did them in.

4. The Sierra Club has protested and delayed some plants, but very few have been halted because of their actions. The closing of the plants has to do mostly with the move to other fuels for the power production.

5. Most of the new proposed rules by the Obama EPA have no gone into effect. The mercury controls are basically a liquid that is sprayed into the hot gases as they move to the stack. For a 200MW plant, the cost is less than $2 million per year. The CO2 controls are still not enacted because there is no "best" technology available as of yet.

A coal-fired power producer can build a new natural gas-fired unit for a fraction of the cost. A 750MW coal-fired plant with modern emission controls as mandated by the Bush EPA will run about $2 billion. A gasifier-type coal-fired plant of the same size wil cost about $3.5 billion. A natural gas-fired combined cycle plant of the same size will cost about $700 million.

A coal-fired power plant operator will see an increase in profits of about 35% by switching to natural gas. No coal handling, no high maintenance associated with burning coal (and it is very high), none of the high cost emission controls, no dealing with the ash that is left over (and it is high in arsenic). It all comes down to profit - profit for T. Boone and profit for the power producers.

There isn't a damned thing Trump or anybody else can do to make the power producers switch back to coal. NOTHING.