On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his administration’s latest effort to boost the U.S. coal industry during an incoherent press event that vacillated haphazardly between energy issues and Trump’s fixation with building and refurbishing monuments in D.C. The energy part of events was also often disconnected from reality.
“Today we are taking historic action to lower the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with clean, beautiful coal power,” Trump said, apparently unaware that coal is one of the most expensive means of generating electricity in America.
With wind and solar power becoming cheaper, coal has become the second most expensive method of producing electricity, behind only the cost of building a new nuclear plant. As a result, no new coal plants have been completed in more than a decade, and coal has gone from powering more than half the electric grid to producing only about 15 percent of the country’s electricity. Before this the indirect costs of using coal are considered. It produces the highest greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy, releases hazardous particles and chemicals into the atmosphere, and leaves behind ash that contains high levels of toxic metals.
That’s the reality, but the White House clearly isn’t inhabiting it. He declared, “If you look at some of the real great failures, countries, they generally wind up.” “It keeps blowing, blowing, blowing and puts you straight out of work. Very expensive. The most expensive thing is energy.”
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