Last week, we noted that the U.S. reduced its carbon emissions last year more than any signatory of the Paris climate agreement. If you found that pleasing, then get ready to smile, because new data hint that it may happen again next year.
According to a new report from the Energy Information Administration, U.S. coal consumption this year is down 4 percent from 2017 and will be the lowest it has been in 39 years. That’s right — Jimmy Carter was president and the U.S. population was 100 million lower the last time the nation used so little coal.
This has not been the result of environmental activism or government intervention to save the planet. Rather, it is the result of the low price and abundance of natural gas, which emits only half as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced.
Gas is now the largest fuel source for domestic electrical production, and soon, it will be one of the nation’s most important exports, to Mexico, to Europe, and to the developing world.
Conservatives defended coal when it was the most economical and reliable fuel. But now, the market is phasing it out — as usual, doing a better job of it than any environmentalist or bureaucrat could. The continued decline of coal and of emissions at a time of strong economic growth points to another year of emissions reduction in 2018. It will be hard for any European nation to beat that without causing its population to riot.
In October, President Trump and Energy Secretary Rick Perry quietly put on the back burner their plan to bail out big coal under a false national security pretext. That was the right move — now, Trump and Perry need to take it out of the oven. Instead of plotting a bailout, it’s time to make sure coal country shares in the prosperity of the burgeoning natural gas market, at whose center it fortunately lies.
Trump was right to lift the boot that former President Barack Obama had been applying to the throat of the coal industry. But the last thing coal country needs is a massive coal mandate that attempts to defeat market forces and brings on stagnation. Such a policy will do much greater harm than good for the economy as a whole, much like the steel quotas and tariffs that are costing autoworker jobs.
What coal country needs is not a sacrifice of the national economy, but a new focus and perhaps a new name: gas country.
The Trump administration can help coal country by fast-tracking permits for pipelines and otherwise facilitating the already-in-progress transition to natural gas extraction. That has already begun without any government interference, such that Appalachia now accounts for more than a quarter of the nation’s natural gas supply and is expected to account for 40 percent in coming decades.
Instead of bailing out King Coal, the Trump administration should leave the industry alone to do its business — even if that means just putting its affairs in order in preparation for a gradual long-term decline. A slow, orderly reduction of mining to market-supported levels will be far less destructive for coal workers than the abrupt end envisioned by meddling Obama-era bureaucrats and environmentalists.
Perry seemed to get this in a recent interview he gave to the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito. If Appalachia were its own country, it “would be the third-largest national gas producer in the world,” he told her.
The main point here is that coal country, and the U.S. as a whole, both have a great future ahead of them, and it doesn’t involve bailouts or other bad decisions that will harm the economy.
