Subsidy plan for coal and nuclear plants 'will cost US taxpayers $10.6bn a year'

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Non-partisan analysis reveals the cost of energy secretary Rick Perry’s proposal to give handouts to some of the country’s oldest and dirtiest power plants

A Trump administration plan to subsidize coal and nuclear energy would cost US taxpayers about $10.6bn a year and prop up some of the oldest and dirtiest power plants in the country, a new analysis has found.

The Department of Energy has proposed that coal and nuclear plants be compensated not only for the electricity they produce but also for the reliability they provide to the grid. The new rule would provide payments to facilities that store fuel on-site for 90 days or more because they are “indispensable for our economic and national security”.

Rick Perry, the energy secretary, said the subsidies were needed to avoid power outages “in times of supply stress such as recent natural disasters”.

The plan would provide a lifeline to many ageing coal and nuclear plants that would otherwise go out of business, primarily due to the abundance of cheap natural gas and the plummeting cost of renewables.


More: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/27/subsidize-coal-nuclear-plants-taxpayer-cost-rick-perry



Emissions spew out of a large stack at the coal-fired Morgantown Generating Station on 10 October 2017 in Newburg, Maryland. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images