Donald Trump’s energy adviser said Wednesday that the first order of business under the Republican nominee’s watch would be to “stop the bleeding” for the coal industry.
“The goal will be first off to stop the bleeding,” said Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who has been serving as Trump’s confidante on energy policy.
He said after the spate of coal plant closures under the Obama administration has been stopped, then a Trump presidency will get to the work of reversing President Obama’s climate and anti-coal policies.
A slew of coal-fire power plants have closed around the nation under Obama, he said, noting that his state suffered a coal plant “fatality” last week.
“First stop the bleeding and then reverse policy,” Cramer said during an event hosted by Politico on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
The coal plant he referred to is owned by Great River Energy in Stanton. The plant is a small 189-megawatt power plant, which Great River deemed uneconomical to continue running given the recent switch to natural gas-fired power plants that is affecting just about every part of the nation.
Natural gas plants are cheaper to run based on the low cost of shale gas produced by fracking. The power plants also run cleaner than many coal plants and require less maintenance and fewer environmental controls for controlling hazardous substances such as mercury.
The Department of Energy’s statistical and analysis arm said recently that gas-fired power plants will reach a new record for supplying the bulk of the nation’s power this summer.
But it is not clear how Trump plans to stop the bleeding when the switch to natural gas is being driven by market forces, not a policy directive.
Critics of the market forces argument argue that Environmental Protection Agency regulations for hazardous pollutants have forced many of the country’s older coal plants to close when weighing whether to invest in more environmental control technologies to comply or to close. Many coal companies have chosen to close rather than invest the millions of dollars necessary to comply with the regulations.
The EPA’s new climate regulations for existing power plants are projected to continue that trend of closures.
The Republican Party platform approved this week said it would target the centerpiece of the EPA’s climate regulations, the Clean Power Plan, for reversal, and end the administration’s “war on coal.”
Trump has said reversing the Clean Power Plan will be part of his first 100 days in office.
Cramer said he believes that coal can be made cleaner through the use of technology called “carbon capture, utilization and storage,” which makes use of carbon dioxide as a commodity rather than a waste product. But it needs time to be developed.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are blamed by many scientists for causing manmade global warming by heating the Earth’s atmosphere.
Placing carbon capture devices on the nation’s coal plants “is a noble goal,” but Democrats’ anti-fossil fuel, “keep it in the ground” policies will “kill coal before we get to that solution.”
So, the first step must be to “stop the bleeding” and let “the innovators innovate.”
