Were Obama’s regulations the reason for the killing of a dying dinosaur or merely a push in that direction – PB/TK
Even With Trump as Cheerleader, the Coal Industry Can Only Decline – By Martha C. White / June 1 2017
As Washington and world leaders watched as Trump was set to announce plans to withdraw from the Paris climate pact, the last coal-fired power plant in New England quietly closed its doors for good.
But despite the administration’s avowed support of coal jobs, energy industry analysts and economists who study the sector say that even Donald Trump’s executive order scuttling the EPA’s Obama-era Clean Power Plan and a pullout from the Paris accord won’t bring back coal’s boom times
“Economics, not regulation, is the prime driver of near-term coal sector distress,” wrote Swami Venkataraman, an analyst with Moody’s Investors Service. Cheaper natural gas and renewable energy will be the primary culprit behind coal power plant closures for the next three to five years, he said. “The trend of low gas prices and declining renewable costs are independent of expectations created by the CPP and will continue to affect coal-fired generation even in its absence.”
Over the long term, Venkataraman wrote that rolling back the CPP would slow — but not halt or reverse — the secular decline of coal. “Many coal plants will need financial support to survive into the next decade given the sector’s dire economics. There are no concrete proposals for such support at this time,” he wrote.
Continue to nbcnews.com article: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/even-trump-cheerleader-coal-industry-can-only-decline-n767216
