Of all Trump’s unkept promises, perhaps no failure has been more spectacular than his complete inability to revive coal country. With clean energy getting cheaper and people increasingly concerned about pollution and climate change, coal is on its way out. This causes real hardships for communities in coal-dependent regions, and a responsible plan to stimulate new industries in coal country should be an important part of the transition away from coal. However, coal’s decline is unambiguously good for our health, that of countless ecosystems, and the global climate.
Coal’s decline should be as welcome as it is now inevitable—but since it’s a good thing, of course Trump has to try to stop it. Fortunately his efforts have so far been a monumental failure. Not only have coal plants continued to close under Trump, this year will likely turn out to set a new record for coal capacity coming offline in the U.S. Meanwhile, utilities have continued to announce new retirements that will occur in coming years.
Throughout 2018 I’ve been casually keeping track when I notice an article about yet another coal plant closure, and below is a recap of some of the highlights from this year’s hemorrhaging of the dying coal industry. This list certainly isn’t comprehensive, but it provides a snapshot of the clean energy revolution taking place across the country:
January: The first month of this year brought bad news for coal in Florida. Florida Power & Light closed its 1,300 MW coal-fired St. Johns River Power Park, while simultaneously opening four new solar power plants. Next, Tampa Electric’s parent company announced it is planning to convert its Big Bend coal plant to natural gas (unfortunately still a fossil fuel), while installing six million solar panels at various sites. There’s no reason a state with as much sunshine as Florida should remain dependent on coal.
February: The Indiana utility Vectren announced it will take three coal plants offline over the next five years, replacing them with a mix of gas and solar. The plan is expected to slash the company’s planet-warming carbon emissions by 60%. Elsewhere in the Midwest one of Michigan’s two main electric utilities said it will phase out coal entirely by the year 2040.
June: Days after Trump ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to find a way of bailing out the coal industry, Xcel energy announced it would retire two coal plants in Colorado. Other major utilities affirmed their plans to phase out coal over the coming years hadn’t changed in light of Trump’s media-stunt announcement. Later in the month Consumers Energy announced new plans to close the last coal plant on Michigan’s Saginaw Bay by 2023.
August: FirstEnergy said it will close three coal plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania (and a diesel-burning plant in Ohio) by the year 2022. The utility did say it would reconsider if Trump/Perry deliver on a plan to subsidize coal-fired power plants, but that plan was later soundly rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
September: In Texas, now the nation’s wind energy capital, American Electric Power announced it will close the 650 MW Oklaunion Power Plant within the next two years. Meanwhile FirstEnergy announced another coal plant closure in Pennsylvania.
October: Toward the end of the month the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis released a study projecting that 2018 will set a new record for coal capacity coming offline in the U.S., with 15.4 GW closing in total. The IEEFA expects that between this year and 2024 fully 15% of the nation’s coal capacity will be retired.
November: As if to prove the IEEFA may have actually under-estimated the speed of coal’s decline, Northern Indiana Public Service Company followed up on its September announcement by saying it will go completely coal-free by 2028 and replace most of that coal with renewables. This is amazing for a utility that now gets 65% of its energy from coal. To top it off, NIPSC predicts replacing coal with cheaper renewable energy will eventually save over $4 billion.
December: PacificCorps, a stubbornly coal-dependent utility owned by Berkshire-Hathaway, admitted it has 13 coal unites in three states (Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado) that are becoming more expensive to operate than cheaper forms of cleaner energy. The utility hasn’t committed to closing all these plants in the near future—yet—but PacifiCorps may be finally starting to see the (solar) light.
Note these plant closures aren’t confined to blue states; they are spread across the South, Great Lakes Region, and Interior West (the Northeast and West Coast were already well on track to eliminating most of their coal before this year). Further, most of these closures have nothing to do with environmental regulations—they are resulting from the simple fact that coal is now more expensive than cleaner forms of energy.
None of this is to say we can rest on our laurels. Trump and Rick Perry will continue looking for ways to bail out the coal industry—even though it means higher energy prices for consumers—and we must beat them back at every turn. And while coal’s decline in the long run now seems inevitable we have a responsibility to this and future generations to make it happen as quickly as possible. The global climate can’t take much more of this filthy black rock being burned in our power plants.