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[ShadowSwordmaster]

When President Trump signed his executive order targeting Obama-era climate policies in March, he made sure to get the optics right. “You’re going back to work,” he promised the coal miners surrounding him. “We will produce American coal to power American industry.”

But for all the show during the signing, power utilities don’t seem to have gotten Trump’s message. Last week, a Reuters survey of utilities in states that sued to block the Clean Power Plan found that, despite Trump’s executive order, most remained committed to their long-term plans to shift away from coal. Coal-fired power plants, the largest customer for the American coal industry, will continue their slow decline, spurred by the rise of cheap natural gas and renewable energy.

Then, last month, coal got a break in Kansas, where the state Supreme Court ruled against Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, granting a permit to the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation to build an expansion to its coal-fired power plant in Holcomb. The expansion would be the first coal-fired plant built in the state since the original Holcomb plant came online in 1983, according to the Sierra Club.

If the White House is right — if onerous environmental regulations are dragging down the coal industry — the ruling in the Holcomb case should have been cause for celebration. But the utility has kept quiet on its plans for the plant. In a statement following the court’s decision, Sunflower said it would “continue to assess the project relative to other resources,” such as wind and natural gas. A spokesperson for the company reiterated that position via email, saying, “With all project decisions, Sunflower factors in the myriad influences in the electric industry.”

When asked if regulatory changes would impact plans for the plant, a Sunflower spokesperson would only confirm that the company “has always followed state and federal regulations and will continue to do so.”

Dorothy Barnett of the Climate + Energy Project, a renewable-energy advocacy group not involved with the lawsuit, noted Sunflower’s silence on the Holcomb expansion in recent appearances before the state legislature.

“I almost feel like I bet they’d wished that they would lose,” she said. “They would have been able to say, ‘Oh, we did our best, blame the Sierra Club.’ In reality, I’d be surprised if Sunflower customers would be willing or able to construct that plant.”

If Sunflower decides to proceed with construction, the new Holcomb plant would join an exclusive club. Only four other coal plants are proposed or under construction in the United States, according to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy. Two of these projects have faced major setbacks in recent months, and the other two have stalled. Meanwhile, 251 U.S. coal plants have been retired since 2010.

Ironically, if constructed, the Holcomb expansion will owe its existence to renewable energy. At the time the plant was initially proposed, clean-power advocates were pushing for a renewable-energy mandate in the legislature. The state struck a deal: Sunflower could build its coal plant if the company and state utilities supported the legislature’s new mandate, which would require utilities to source 20 percent of their power from renewables by 2020.

The deal was a shot of adrenaline for renewables in Kansas — especially the wind industry. Today, Kansas generates 30 percent of its electricity from wind, more than any state except Iowa. “Even the companies who were so supportive and wanted to build [the Holcomb] plant themselves have invested in wind energy in the state,” Barnett said in an interview with Climate Nexus.

There is more in the link.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/04/28/building-coal-plant-kansas-2017-trouble-worth/

 

[TheOfficeMut]

This is all very interesting. So it sounds to me like the energy industry on its own, despite Trump's attempts at reigniting coal and fucking our climate further, is looking for cleaner and more renewable ways to conduct business, only because costs are coming down, which is good for us? Am I reading that right?

 

[Man God]

Natural Gas is what really killed coal, and it did it DECADES ago.

Solar will just nail the coffin and dig the grave.

 

[Ogodei]

This is all very interesting. So it sounds to me like the energy industry on its own, despite Trump's attempts at reigniting coal and fucking our climate further, is looking for cleaner and more renewable ways to conduct business, only because costs are coming down, which is good for us? Am I reading that right?

That's been the case. The first reason is the cost for renewables plummeting in the last 10 years, the second is the rise of Shale Fracking (which has its own problems, but is a step better than Coal both in terms of extraction and burning), the third reason is the fact that utilities operate on a slower timetable than the political cycle: despite Trump in power now, they know the pendulum will swing back. There's a sort of "mean expected regulatory burden" that they have to shoot for. It's not like these companies can just flip the pollution switch back to "on" whenever the GOP is on the upswing.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

This is all very interesting. So it sounds to me like the energy industry on its own, despite Trump's attempts at reigniting coal and fucking our climate further, is looking for cleaner and more renewable ways to conduct business, only because costs are coming down, which is good for us? Am I reading that right?

The overall market is heading towards renewables with the cost of renewable going down and continuing going down. Trump can not do anything to stop it. He maybe can slowly it down but if that could lead to problems with energy companies.

 

[Iksenpets]

This is all very interesting. So it sounds to me like the energy industry on its own, despite Trump's attempts at reigniting coal and fucking our climate further, is looking for cleaner and more renewable ways to conduct business, only because costs are coming down, which is good for us? Am I reading that right?

Pretty much. Market forces are doing more to kill coal than any of Obama's regulations. Obama was just speeding the inevitable along. Wind and especially solar are getting much cheaper, and gas has both gotten much cheaper and is much better than coal at being quickly fired up to fill in the gaps in wind/solar networks when winds die down or it gets cloudy. Coal plants have to burn pretty much constantly, and are now more expensive than any of their alternatives.

The only real market for coal at this point is in Asia, and for the time being we don't have the infrastructure to ship all of our coal production over there. That's where the actual focus would need to be to bring coal back, not deregulation, but that's both expensive and none of the West Coast ports actually want to host massive coal shipment centers.

 

[Beartruck]

Nobody wants to buy a stagecoach in the age of the model T.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Pretty much. Market forces are doing more to kill coal than any of Obama's regulations. Obama was just speeding the inevitable along. Wind and especially solar are getting much cheaper, and gas has both gotten much cheaper and is much better than coal at being quickly fired up to fill in the gaps in wind/solar networks when winds die down or it gets cloudy. Coal plants have to burn pretty much constantly, and are now more expensive than any of their alternatives.

The only real market for coal at this point is in Asia, and for the time being we don't have the infrastructure to ship all of our coal production over there. That's where the actual focus would need to be to bring coal back, not deregulation, but that's both expensive and none of the West Coast ports actually want to host massive coal shipment centers.

Even Asia is moving away from coal too, although more slowly.

 

[Slayven]

Nobody wants to buy a stagecoach in the age of the model T.

And let the church say amen

 

[GiantEnemyGoomba]

I wish Donald would wise up and try to start transitioning old energy jobs to solar jobs and the like.

Coal is going away and there's really nothing that can stop it for better or for worse (mostly for better).

 

[SummitAve]

I work with the power generation industry at times in the air pollution field. Nobody is investing or even interested in investing in coal. The market led them in that direction before regulators even had the chance so it's not like regulation killed the industry, common business sense did. In my state the few coal plants left were already in compliance with the clean power plan at the same time legislatures were debating how much harm it would cause to jobs and the economy.... There is more money in decommissioning and converting old coal plants at this point. Nobody wants to deal with coal anymore, including those who made plenty of money off of it.

 

[RumblingRosco]

I never thought the free market would actually be what stood against Trump's anti-environment agenda.

 

[The Technomancer]

This is all very interesting. So it sounds to me like the energy industry on its own, despite Trump's attempts at reigniting coal and fucking our climate further, is looking for cleaner and more renewable ways to conduct business, only because costs are coming down, which is good for us? Am I reading that right?

Yup. And its why the narrative around what's ailing these coal towns seems...simplistic. More robust social democratic systems would ensure that people's material poverty wasn't as bad, don't get me wrong, but the fundamental issue of "there's not much reason to work here anymore" was going to happen no matter what

 

[Kyuur]

If I was the company I'd be a hesitant to wage my bets building this kind of long-term investment on an administration that could last only 4 years too, even if it was extremely profitable short-term.

 

[The Technomancer]

I never thought the free market would actually be what stood against Trump's anti-environment agenda.

At the end of the day the market wants cheap. We finally got to a point, about three decades too late, where what's cheap is also good

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

I thought someone was cleaning coal or something.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

I never thought the free market would actually be what stood against Trump's anti-environment agenda.

The market wants something cheap and coal is anything but that.

 

[TheLostBigBoss]

I never thought the free market would actually be what stood against Trump's anti-environment agenda.

(people have been saying this for a while -cough cough-)

 

[Theonik]

At the end of the day the market wants cheap. We finally got to a point, about three decades too late, where what's cheap is also good

Essentially, the value of regulation and subsidies here is in building critical mass in these technologies. Incentivise early investment that is expensive to enable costs to go down faster. Once costs begin dropping to a sufficient market forces take over pumping accelerating investment that helps bring down costs faster.

After that it is only a matter of time.