Obama "bankrupting" coal companies

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It ain't coming back..

Despite his campaign promises, it would be tough for U.S. President Donald Trump to bring coal mining jobs back to the country or boost the industry in any substantial way. The mining industry continues to shrink around the globe, and it isn't getting any safer, either. While hours worked in the industry have steadily declined – dropping 28 percent between 2012 and 2016 – the number of fatalities and their frequency have increased in the past two years, according to the International Council on Mining and Metals, a partnership between industry companies and regional associations dedicated to strengthening the environmental and social performance of the mining industry.

Coal's global 'race to the bottom'

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Meanwhile, in China..

China will suspend approvals for new coal-fired power plants in 29 provinces to reduce overcapacity in the sector, the official China Securities Journal reported on Friday. The National Energy Administration (NEA) has put as many as 25 provinces on "red alert", meaning that new projects would create severe overcapacity or environmental risks, while another four regions were put on "orange alert," the newspaper said citing a NEA statement this week. The NEA said that utilization rates at coal-fired power plants were falling as a result of slowing growth in power consumption, and it established the warning system to identify regions that need to curb overcapacity.

China suspends new coal-fired power plants in 29 provinces: report | Reuters

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And another U-turn..

Whether or not the United States will remain in the historic Paris climate agreement is a major question surrounding President Donald Trump’s trip to Italy for the G7 Summit. Trump’s top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, was asked about the decision aboard Air Force One on Thursday, and had some surprising answers.

Cohn told reporters that coal doesn’t “make that much sense anymore,” but that pushing renewables could make America “a manufacturing powerhouse.” The words seem off-message from a White House that has promised repeatedly to bring back coal jobs and just proposed massive cuts to federal investment in clean energy.

Top Trump economic adviser: ‘Coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore’

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Even according to Blackrock, the world's biggest investment fund, coal is dead..

Australia is "denying gravity" by continuing to encourage coal investments because renewable energy is now competing "head to head" with coal on cost, the global head of BlackRock's infrastructure investment group, Jim Barry, says. "It's been amusing sitting back and watching Australia from afar because in effect it's been denying gravity," Mr Barry, who is based in Dublin, told the The Australian Financial Review.

"Coal is dead. That's not to say all the coal plants are going to shut tomorrow. But anyone who's looking to take beyond a 10-year view on coal is gambling very significantly." Mr Barry, who plans to start investing in Australian renewable energy projects, acknowledged it was hard for politicians "not to do something" with resources like coal when they were available, but said he did not think there was "long-term potential" in Indian conglomerate Adani's proposed $16.5 billion Carmichael coal mine. He said no board directors in the US would make a 30-year commitment to coal.

BlackRock says coal is dead as it eyes renewable power splurge | afr.com

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As news broke today that President Trump is planning to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, two East Coast companies made final arrangements to shutter three coal-fired power plants. On June 1, Public Service Enterprise Group, the parent of PSEG Power, will retire the two largest coal plants remaining in New Jersey. The Mercer and Hudson generating stations will close on Thursday, as inexpensive natural gas continues to force coal off of the grid in states across the country. 

Natural gas prices hit their lowest levels in nearly 20 years in 2016. Meanwhile, U.S. coal use declined by 18 percent nationwide last year, and coal production in all major regions fell by at least 15 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Three Coal Plants Close the Same Day Trump Said to Exit the Paris Climate Agreement | Greentech Media.

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Reviving coal? Hardly..

Perhaps most surprising is how, in that same period, stock prices have fallen for U.S. coal companies, Mic found. Stock prices for the three-largest publicly traded coal producers, who mine more than half the country's coal, have not recovered from major losses seen before the election. 

Peabody Energy, which dug 351 million pounds of coal in 2015, went bankrupt in April 2016. Peabody has lost more than 20% of its value since its stock was reissued at the beginning of April this year — a move that came after Trump struck down Obama's Clean Power Plan and a rule that prohibited coal companies from dumping waste in streams. 

Another top coal producer, Cloud Peak Energy, has lost 59% of its value since the day after Trump's victory. Alpha Natural Resources, a privately owned top-five coal producer,  announced Tuesday it was divesting entirely from coal and natural gas holdings in West Virginia.

The White House has been careful not to offer specific projections on how many jobs will be created by these changes. But in broad strokes, the administration has promised that rolling back environmental regulations will lead to higher employment. "I made [coal miners] this promise we will put them back to work," Trump said when he rolled back Obama's rules restricting power plant pollution.

Trump is reducing environmental regulations - Business Insider

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Renewable energy cost declines continue to outpace what analysts predicted just one year ago.  
That's the upshot from Bloomberg New Energy Finance's latest installment of the annual New Energy Outlookreport, which models the global energy mix out to 2040. The authors predict renewables will capture 72 percent of the $10.2 trillion spent on new generation in the next 23 years, and will produce 51 percent of global power generation in 2040.

That's the global average, which means in certain places, zero-carbon penetration will be even higher, explained lead author Seb Henbest. All renewables will supply more than 80 percent of power in Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Italy, for instance. Solar and wind alone will produce more than 50 percent of generation in Australia, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom. In just the next five years, large-scale solar will be cheaper than new coal plants in essentially all major economies.

Renewables Are Expected to Dominate Global Power Generation by 2040 | Greentech Media

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While President Donald Trump continues to tout “clean” coal, coal baron Robert Murray says it’s just a fantasy. “Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It’s a pseudonym for ‘no coal,’” the CEO of Murray Energy, the country’s largest privately held coal-mining company, told E&E News. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), also called carbon capture and storage, is the process of trapping carbon dioxide from a power plant (during or after burning a hydrocarbon like coal) and then storing it permanently, usually underground.
It’s a technically challenging and expensive process — especially problematic in an era of cheap natural gas and renewable energy. Mississippi pulled the plug on one of the country’s biggest CCS efforts last month after the company spent billions on trying, and failing, to make it work.

Clean coal ‘does not work’ says top U.S. coal baron

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From the same guy who argued CO2 isn't necessarily the cause of climate change. And to think that this guy is the Energy Secretary..

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry toured the Longview coal plant in West Virginia on Thursday with the state’s congressional delegation. During the visit, Perry’s tentative grasp of economics was on full display, as he told the crowd that demand for coal would follow supply.


Given a generous reading, Perry is referring here to Say’s law, also known as the law of markets, which has been rephrased as “supply creates its own demand.” In fact, the classical economic theory could be more accurately rephrased as “the total demand of an economy will meet the amount of supply,” although Keynes and the Depression called Say’s law into rather dramatic question. The rule does not apply to individual products, such as coal (or horses and buggies, or typewriters).


But Longview is an odd place to tout economic theory: The plant, which went online in 2011, went bankrupt in 2013. At the time, the Wall Street Journal blamed low natural gas prices for the plant’s economic woes. As a merchant plant, Longview sells electricity on the open market and is susceptible to price fluctuations as demand moves to lower-cost options.

Ironically, Perry gave his “little economics lesson” just days after West Virginia University released a report that echoed numerous recent analyses in stating coal demand will not be coming back. The report predicts that demand will remain in the 80-million-ton range through the first part of the next decade and will fall below 80 million tons by 2030 — and it’s not expected to rebound from there. The report attributed the long-term outlook for coal production to low demand overseas, declining productivity in West Virginia’s mines, and a decrease in U.S. coal-fired power plants — which, again, is tied to low-cost natural gas prices as well as increased emissions standards and more economical clean energy. (West Virginia’s biggest utility even announced this week it would invest in two more wind farms.)

Rick Perry tries to make the economic case for coal, screws up the economics part

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The clouds were smog, a soup of sulfur dioxide, particulates, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants emanating from the smokestacks of the coal-burning Four Corners Power Plant and San Juan Generating Station, on either side of the San Juan River Valley. The people of the Four Corners have experienced that cloud in one form or another nearly every day for the past half century. Our skies have been sullied, as have our lungs; mercury wafts from these and other smokestacks and falls with rain on Mesa Verde National Park and in the clear, icy streams of the San Juan Mountains.

The plants suck millions of gallons of water from the river each day for steam production and cooling, and they leave behind mountains of ash, clinkers and sludge, tainted with mercury, arsenic, selenium and other toxic material. That’s all in addition to the tens of millions of tons of climate-altering carbon dioxide the stacks release each year. We’ve been told that this is just the price we pay for power, that this is what it costs to keep the lights on in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, that we have no choice but to live with it. To stop burning coal, or even try to mitigate the harm, we’ve been told, will put thousands of hard-working Americans out of a job, skyrocket electricity costs, and black-out our lights and computers.

Trump Is Big Coal’s Last Gasp | New Republic