Despite Trump, coal plants in the US keep shutting down one after another
Energy — di Valentina Neri
Donald Trump has promised to breathe new life into coal, but the plants are old and uneconomical. And they have no choice but to close.
Despite Trump, coal plants in the US keep shutting down one after another
Donald Trump has promised to breathe new life into coal, but the plants are old and uneconomical. And they have no choice but to close.
"We will put our miners back to work. We have already eliminated the devastating regulations against coal, but this is only the beginning. My administration has ended the war on coal." These are the words of US president Donald Trump. Looking at the numbers, however, a very different reality emerges. A reality in which American coal plants are shutting down, one after another.
Coal plants are losing ground, even in the US
The study published by the Institute for energy economics and financial analysis (Ieefa) is clear. This year the US is on track to close a series of coal plants with a combined capacity of 15.4 gigawatts. An all-time record (the previous one stood at 14.7 gigawatts). And the coming years will be no different, judging by company plans and news reports. At present, the American coal industry stands at a total capacity of 246 gigawatts, but between the start of 2018 and the end of 2024 it will "lose" around 36.7 of them. That is 15 per cent of the total.
According to statements made to Green Tech Media by the report's author, Seth Feaster, this estimate is, if anything, too conservative. There are many other plants that are officially operational but running at reduced capacity, or are beginning to undergo reviews that foreshadow a permanent shutdown.
Not even Donald Trump can stop the energy transition
Coal is the centrepiece of Affordable clean energy, the new plan launched by Donald Trump to sweep away the Clean power plan of his predecessor Barack Obama (which had in fact already been blocked by the Supreme Court in 2016). Indeed, it would have been hard to imagine more generous legislation towards such a polluting energy source: under the measure, each state will be able to independently regulate the emission targets of its plants.
According to the Ieefa institute, this regulatory overhaul will certainly have an impact on plant closures. But it will be a limited one. Because, if plants are being closed, it is primarily for other reasons. The first is that they are no longer economically viable from a purely financial standpoint. The second is that they are old, having been built for the most part before the 1980s.
According to the Eia (Energy Information Administration), which provides official US government statistics, in 2014 coal accounted for 39 per cent of the US energy mix. By 2019, in the space of just five years, it will have fallen to 27 per cent. An inevitable decline, despite Donald Trump's frantic and futile attempts to stem it.