On March 28, President Trump signed the “Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth” (EO) requiring the EPA to “suspend, revise, or rescind” President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP).
The primary goal of the CPP was to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, which produce approximately 40 percent of all carbon emissions in the U.S., to comply with the U.S. commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement signed by virtually all nations of the world.
The Paris Climate Agreement attempts to keep Earth from warming more than 3.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a point at which further warming may result in unacceptably high risks. Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Research states “Beyond two degrees of warming we are leaving the world as we know it.”
Trump falsely claimed the CPP is a “crushing attack on American industry” and that his EO was the “start of a new era in American energy and production and job creation.” Trump proclaimed “Clean coal, clean coal” and “I made them this promise: We will put our miners back to work.” Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Forbes on May 5 listed three reasons why Trump is wrong: 1. “Clean coal doesn’t work”; 2. “Once mines have closed, you don’t reopen them if cheaper alternatives exist”; and 3. “Fracking has made natural gas cheaper than coal for power generation.” Forbes didn’t mention that fracked gas may be as dirty as coal due to leaks throughout the production process.
By signing this EO, Trump has made denial of global warming and climate change the official policy of the U.S. and the loss of jobs in the declining coal industry more important than securing a livable planet for ourselves and future generations.
Trump’s EO did not start the process of withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, which would legally take four years, but his actions mean the U.S. will not meet its commitments and has no intention of complying with the Agreement. This raises concerns about how China, India, Brazil and other nations will respond. “The worst-case-scenario is that the Paris agreement will unravel” according to Robert Stavins, Harvard professor of environmental economics.
China’s president Xi has said “All signatories should stick to (the Paris agreement) instead of walking away from it, as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations,” meanwhile Trump rants about “clean coal” and China’s global warming “hoax.”
A recent National Geographic article from April states “In the U.S., solar now employs more people than coal, oil, and gas combined,” and a graphic illustrates that by the early 2020s, solar and wind will be cheaper than coal or natural gas. If Trump really wants to create jobs and prosperity, he is on the wrong side of history.
In 2012, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted that the percentage of renewable energy generation in the United States was going to increase due to reduced costs of renewable technologies, while the percentage of U.S. electricity from coal-fired generation would decrease as coal companies have to move into reserves that are more costly to mine.
According to EnergySage, a national solar marketplace, “solar’s low cost trajectory is likely to continue: unlike oil, gas and coal, solar PV is a technology not a fuel — meaning that its costs will continue to fall every year as research continues and technology improves.”
“As a result, the discussion of whether solar is cheaper than coal has already become an outdated debate. Today, energy companies are developing solar PV projects that can deliver energy at half the cost of coal, and that’s without factoring in the costly negative impacts of coal — such as heavy carbon pollution, strip mining, and mountaintop removal.”
In the second presidential debate between Clinton and Trump, Trump said “There is a thing called clean coal.” “Clean coal” generally refers to a process of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which attempts to remove CO2 from the emissions of coal combustion and store it deep underground.
But does it work? Inside Energy, a public media collaborative, says “So far, not well. (Many) clean coal projects have ended in failure.” Also, The Conversation, an independent source of news from the academic and research community, stated on Dec. 3 “There are no large-scale CCS power plants currently in operation. Our research, which was funded by the US National Science Foundation, showed that the fuel costs of coal-fired power plants can increase by up to 136 percent with the addition of a CO2 capture plant.”
We have already seen Trump “turn-on-a-dime,” reversing campaign promises without a backward glance. His promise to coal miners is an empty one, he will never bring the coal industry back. Trump should look to the future and create renewable energy jobs for miners, while leading the world toward a sustainable future.
William Gran, now retired, was an
adjunct instructor at Greenfield Community College on global warming and climate change. He can be reached at whgran@gmail.com