One of
Donald Trump's
faults is that
in 2016 he grossly
over promised what
any president could
deliver in four years,
or even eight years.
He didn't promise
a lot of "free stuff"
like current Democrat
candidates, so he gets
my complement for
that common sense.
US farmers were
already hurting from
the Trump trade war
I had written in my
economics newsletter
in 2018 that China
cleverly cut back
on purchases of
US food, so they
could later promise
to "increase imports
of US agricultural goods",
and then merely return
to the 2017 level !
The US farming
industry suffered,
and then got
hit again by
terrible weather
in 2019 --
spring flooding
delayed planting,
and then
cold weather
ruined some
late harvests.
That was bad news
so I guess it was
"climate change"?
A good growing season
would just be "weather".
After writing
the prior article
on planned
building of coal
power plants,
and the resulting
increased coal use,
in Africa,
and a recent article
on the same pattern
happening in China,
I wondered about
the state of the US
coal industry that
candidate Trump
promised to save.
The state of the
U.S. coal industry
is not good.
More than 50 coal plants
shut down since 2015,
when Trump started
running for President.
-- A big Trump backer,
coal tycoon Robert Murray,
filed for bankruptcy
on October 29, but will
continue operating,
but with CEO Robert
Murray tossed out.
Murray had contributed
$1 million to a Trump
super political action
committee, and donated
another $300,000 to the
president’s inauguration.
That did not help !
-- One of the largest
coal companies
in the western U.S.
closed on Monday.
-- The Navajo
Generating Station
burned the last of its coal
after the mine that supplied
the Arizona plant with coal
closed in August.
Trump promised to end
Obama’s “war on coal.”
The Energy Information
Administration (EIA)
reported, since 2016:
“34.1 [gigawatts]
of coal capacity from
170 coal-fired generators
at 85 plants have retired
— 36 of those plants
remain operational”.
One gigawatt can power
roughly 300,000 homes.
New York Attorney
General Letitia James,
a Democrat of course,
is among a handful
of attorneys general
suing the administration
to block Trump from
easing restrictions
on coal power plants.
Obama's Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
placed national limits on
carbon dioxide emissions
from coal power plants
( The Clean Power Plan ),
encouraging states to close
and replace coal facilities
with natural gas power plants.
Most coal plant closures
were caused by the
Mercury and Air Toxics
Standards rule [ MATS ]
Obama used the rule
to justify waves
of anti-coal regulations.
The U.S. Supreme Court
overturned the rule in 2015.
But low natural gas prices
encouraged use of that
now cheaper, and cleaner,
fossil fuel: Natural gas.
The U.S.
coal industry
is still dying,
but not yet dead.
The U.S. got 27%
of its power from
coal plants in 2018
( 64% for my own power
company, DTE Energy,
in the Detroit suburbs ).