EDITORIAL There are good reasons why coal is in decline

Shortsighted. Counterproductive. Regrettable. Predictable.
Those are a few of the words that came to mind when we heard that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for a plan to force electricity-grid operators to buy a certain percentage of power from struggling coal and nuclear plants.
“Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity,” said a 41-page draft memo obtained last week by Bloomberg News.
Uh, no, it isn’t. The best course of action is to let the free markets dictate the course of our energy generation in this country. Remember when Republicans liked that concept? But this is not your father’s Republican Party. This is an administration that has proven time and again that it has little interest in protecting the environment but a lot of interest in protecting its deep-pocketed friends.
According to a report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The issue is a priority for some of the president’s top supporters, including coal moguls Robert Murray and Joseph Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, who donated a million dollars to the president’s inauguration. The move would be one of the most direct efforts by Mr. Trump to make good on campaign promises to revive the nation’s shrinking coal industry.”
There are good reasons why the coal industry is shrinking. Despite those who push the concept of “clean coal” technology, coal is a dirty fuel compared with others that are available. Also, the rise of natural gas, especially in our own Marcellus Shale region, has increasingly pushed coal to the rear.
The P-G noted that opponents of the president’s proposed bailouts for coal and nuclear interests say it could cost ratepayers billions of dollars, and that a coalition of advocates for natural gas and renewable power sources told Energy Secretary Rick Perry that “power plant retirements are a normal, healthy feature of electricity markets,” refuting the idea that such closings over the past few years signal a need for emergency action by the administration, which also has invoked national security concerns as a reason for its proposal.
“They’re trying a new hat on here: national security,” John Moore, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, told Mother Jones magazine. “They tried to save the (coal and nuclear) power plants in the name of reliability, in the name of resilience, of fuel security, and now in the name of national security. It’s the kind of proposal that ought to generate strong bipartisan opposition because it’s so anti-markets.”
Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal program, told Mother Jones that she expects the Trump plan “will end up in the trash heap of other policies” the administration has pursued to prop up coal.
“We are still seeing coal plants retire at the same rate under Trump as Obama, and that’s because they can’t compete anymore,” Hitt noted.
Trump’s latest attempt to save the coal industry could be compared to a president stepping in to rescue buggy-makers after the rise of automobiles, or demanding that people travel cross-country by passenger train rather than on airplanes.
Coal still has a spot in our mix of energy sources, but it is rightly in decline because of environmental and economic reasons. Natural gas will, and should, play an increasingly larger role, and renewable energy should be the prime focus for the future. The administration’s refusal to encourage and invest in that sector will come back to haunt us for years.