IEA Forecast Nails Lid On Coffin Of Trump's Coal Promises - CNBC

[hatrack]

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to put coal miners back to work and deliver 1,000 years of clean coal, but the world's leading energy authority on Wednesday delivered a starkly different forecast.

The International Energy Agency sees little respite for the coal industry in its 2016 World Energy Outlook. Over the next five years, the agency projects U.S. coal companies will continue to cut capacity to battle falling demand, a global oversupply and slumping prices.

"With no global upturn in demand in sight for coal, the search for market equilibrium depends on cuts to supply capacity, mainly in China and the United States," the IEA said. That sets up a difficult backdrop for Trump's first term. The Republican has promised to turn the tide for U.S. coal miners by rolling back regulations and ending President Barack Obama's moratorium on new coal mining on federal land.

EDIT

The IEA believes about three-quarters of current U.S. coal capacity can operate profitably once the industry works through a painful debt restructuring. It assumes the remaining coal companies return to health in the early 2020s. But even then, the IEA considers a scenario in which "cutthroat competition" keeps global markets swimming in too much coal, putting a lid on prices and extending the crisis. If this happens, coal industry wages could spiral downward as workers settle for lower pay over unemployment.

EDIT

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/16/trump-pledges-us-coal-revival-worlds-energy-authority-begs-to-differ.html

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. Trumps Empty Promise to Coal Country

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602853/trumps-empty-promise-to-coal-country/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Trump’s Empty Promise to Coal Country[/font]

[font size=4]As long as natural gas remains cheap and plentiful, none of the president-elect’s regulatory changes can bring coal roaring back.[/font]

by James Temple | November 15, 2016

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In early May, speaking before a cheering West Virginia crowd filled with miners wearing hard hats or holding “Trump Digs Coal” signs, the then-Republican nominee pledged: “Get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off.”

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Few doubt the Trump administration will move swiftly to unravel environmental rules that are wildly unpopular across the fossil fuel industry, allowing a dangerous rise in greenhouse gas emissions. But observers say no amount of regulatory rollbacks can bring the coal sector roaring back at this point.

That’s because regulations aren’t the industry’s real problem—market forces are. Coal’s true rival is cheap natural gas, which was freed in soaring volumes during the last decade through fracking. Coal’s economics meant it simply couldn’t compete.

Meanwhile, mining jobs have been in decline since a boom in the 1970s, falling even while production climbed, largely due to shifts toward highly mechanized and less labor-intensive methods like mountaintop removal and strip mining. There were more than a quarter of a million U.S. coal mining jobs in 1979. As of October, there were fewer than 54,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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