Whether you voted for Trump or not, I think we can all agree that we want a clean environment. The planet is warming, dangerously so, and burning more coal will make it worse. BLOOMBERG — President-elect Donald Trump thinks man-made climate change is a hoax and he's promised to revive the US coal industry by cutting regulation. So renewables are dead in the water, right? Maybe not. President Trump can't tell producers which power generation technologies to buy. That decision will come down to cost in the end. Right now coal's losing that battle, while renewables are gaining. Experts say it’s virtually certain Trump will dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan (CPP), which obliges states to cut fossil-power carbon emissions. That will likely keep more coal plants open for longer. But, try as he might, Trump can't will the coal industry back to health. It will still struggle to compete with cheap natural gas. Coal’s share of the U.S. electricity mix has plunged to less than a third today from about half in 2008. “Donald Trump has the courage, the passion and the commitment to get it done,” said Robert E. Murray, the industry’s most outspoken champion and CEO of Murray Energy Corp. “But I do not see an increase in the market for coal.” Can't Keep Them Down Even without the Clean Power Plan, renewables will continue to gain Even without the CPP, about 60 gigawatts of coal-fired generating capacity will probably be retired by 2030. On the same basis, renewable capacity would still be expected to grow more than 4 percent a year until 2040, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, meaning they'd have a 23 percent share of generation The chart below outlines various scenarios for capacity additions and retirements. Without CPP, it shows slower growth for renewables, but no renaissance for coal. Last December, U.S. lawmakers renewed tax credits for wind and solar for another five years. The measure had bipartisan support and it would be hard for Trump to try to repeal it. States such as California are also free to continue offering incentives for renewable energy, as before. Even without tax breaks, renewables will probably win out on cost grounds. Equipment costs are falling and, once installed, producers don't have to pay to harness the wind or the sun. Onshore wind is already cost-competitive with gas in the U.S. and solar costs are falling rapidly. Winds of Change Wind is already cost competitive with natural gas in the US. (Note: Coal is so expensive it's literally off the chart at $139.50/MWh) Global efforts to halt climate change will suffer from a Trump White House and U.S. carbon emissions are likely to stay higher for longer. In no way is that good. But he can't change energy economics. Thank you to Chris Bryant and BloombergGadfly for providing the original article below. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-11-09/trump-cannot-halt-the-march-of-clean-energy
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