Aren’t you glad we have all these hard nosed capitalist business men in charge in DC?
We’ve heard ad nauseam about the terrible subsidies for clean energy, and how evil globalists are “picking winners” by incentivizing clean energy.
So, what does the market think of, say, coal?
Federal officials rejected a company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for less than a penny per ton, in what would have been the biggest U.S. government coal sale in more than a decade.
The failed sale underscores a continued low appetite for coal among utilities that are turning to cheaper natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar to generate electricity. Emissions from burning coal are a leading driver of climate change, which scientists say is raising sea levels and making weather more extreme.
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So markets seem to be telling us something important about the demand for coal. The reasons for that are obvious if you look at the costs of coal generation compared to cleaner, cheaper, quicker to market competitors.
But, Republican “Business men” in charge are where they are because of donors. And a lot of those donors are fossil fuel barons. And those donors expect some payback.
Federal officials have ordered a temporary halt to the planned shutdowns of two coal-burning Indiana power plants amid President Donald Trump’s attempts to boost the coal mining industry.
The U.S. Department of Energy orders issued Tuesday require Northern Indiana Public Service Co. and CenterPoint Energy to keep those generating plants operating despite their intentions of closing them this month.
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Following up a similar action in Michigan this past summer, the Trump administration will be keeping unreliable, uneconomic coal plants open on the backs of ratepayers. The Wall Street Journal reported that keeping the JH Campbell coal fired plant open is costing ratepayers over several states $615,000 per day.
Not surprisingly, claims that coal plants are needed to insure “reliability” are not backed up by real world performance.
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Despite claims from the Trump administration that coal is “reliable,” data from North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) shows that coal experiences the most outages from equipment failures of any power source in the U.S.
Case in point: In June, the Campbell plant partially broke downwhen DOE claimed it was important for maintaining reliability. Only one unit was even producing power because another unit had been broken for weeks and the third abruptly shut off.
The regional grid operator (MISO) had a surplus of resources greater than ten times the power provided by Campbell because the grid operator and utility were prepared for its retirement. Moreover, NERC’s latest annual winter reliability assessment, also released yesterday, concluded that MISO has sufficient resources to meet electricity needs even in situations with extreme levels of demand and generator outages.
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For example, in a legal filing opposing the extension for Michigan’s JH Campbell plant, consumer and environmental intervenors pointed to a record of consistent breakdowns and unavailability for the aging plant.
(Where do you get parts for a 60 year old power plant?)
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From that filing –
- Campbell Is Old, Unreliable, Inflexible, Dirty, and Expensive.
i. Campbell Is Old and Unreliable.
Campbell Units 1 and 2 are beyond the typical operational life of coal units,
Ex. 3 at 15 (Powers June Decl.) (citing Exs. 63 (Palgrave Handbook) and 64 (IEA
Report)), and all three units have experienced long and recurrent outages in recent years that reflect aged, worn components that are expensive and may be difficult to repair or replace, id. at 4, 15. - In the tables below, and with further context in his declaration, Public Interest Organizations’ expert engineer Bill Powers identifies the duration and reasons for the units’ longest outages in the past two years based on Consumers’ filings with the Michigan Commission. Id. at 5. (For reference, there are 8,760 hours in a year.)
The outages demonstrate Campbell’s increasing inability to consistently perform even under normal conditions, let alone to meet an emergency. All three Campbell units have been unexpectedly unable to produce power during significant portions of recent years (known as the units’ “forced outage rate”4). Id. at 4 (citing Consumers’ filings with the Michigan Commission). In 2023, the units’ forced outage rates were 18.66% (Unit 1), 57.32% (Unit 2), and 22.41% (Unit 3). Id. In 2024, the rates were 14.84% (Unit 1), 48.07% (Unit 2), and 19.25% (Unit 3). Id. By contrast, the national average forced outage rate for coal-burning units is approximately 12%.
A day after the Trump administration acted to throttle offshore wind farms, it tossed two lifelines to coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel and a favored industry of the president.
The government ordered two coal-burning power plants in Indiana to continue operating past their scheduled closure dates while it also gave hundreds of coal plants an additional five years before they need to prevent toxic chemicals from leaching into sources of drinking water.
The dual moves late on Tuesday were part of the administration’s sweeping effort to bolster the struggling coal industry and avoid having coal plants close on President Trump’s watch.
The day before, the Trump administration had dealt a devastating blow to clean energy by ordering the suspension of five offshore wind projects that were under construction along the East Coast and poised to deliver power to more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.
While coal plants once generated nearly half of America’s electricity, they produced just 16 percent last year. Hundreds of coal units have retired since the mid-2000s as utilities switched to cheaper natural gas plants and wind and solar power.
Mr. Trump has been intent on reviving what he calls “beautiful, clean coal.” In a series of steps aimed at improving the economics of coal, the administration has opened more federal lands to coal mining, reduced the royalty rates that companies must pay the government to extract coal from public lands, offered $625 million in grants to upgrade coal plants and loosened limits on their emissions.
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Mr. Trump has been intent on reviving what he calls “beautiful, clean coal.” In a series of steps aimed at improving the economics of coal, the administration has opened more federal lands to coal mining, reduced the royalty rates that companies must pay the government to extract coal from public lands, offered $625 million in grants to upgrade coal plants and loosened limits on their emissions.
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One of Mr. Wright’s orders will affect an aging coal-powered unit at the F.B. Culley Generating Station in Warrick County, Ind. CenterPoint Energy, the operator of the plant, had predicted that the retirement of this unit and one other would save its customers $80 million on their electric bills over the next 20 years.
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Also on Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a regulation delaying standards aimed at limiting the leaching of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury into water supplies from coal-ash dump sites.
Coal ash, the residue produced from burning coal, was dumped for years in unlined ponds, landfills and mines, where toxic pollution can leak into water and soil. The federal government began to tighten regulations after spills in North Carolina and Tennessee sent mercury, cadmium, arsenic and other heavy metals from the ash into water supplies.
The Biden administration had ordered coal plants that intended to continue operating through the 2030s to begin meeting strict wastewater standards no later than 2029. The Trump administration called those deadlines “unworkable” and gave utilities five more years to comply.
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Thomas Cmar, an attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said the delay could result in an increase in cancer, cardiovascular disease and other health issues linked to coal ash discharges. “It means that the 3 million people who still rely on drinking water that’s found to be contaminated by coal ash wastewater discharges will have rivers and lakes and streams not cleaned up,” he said.
Ms. Bloodworth of the coal lobby said the industry wants the E.P.A. to eliminate the wastewater standards entirely. Complying with them would be so costly as to drive some power plants to close, she said.