Trump-Perry Plan to force utilities to burn coal can't even find support in the Trump White House
In November 2017, the Donald Trump administration announced a plan to employ emergency powers that had gone untouched since the Korean War in order to distort the energy marketplace in favor of coal. But as early as January of this year, Trump and designated point man Rick Perry found that even Trump-appointed regulators were unwilling to go for the plan that would force utilities to produce more power from coal and nuclear—even if it caused higher prices for their customers and generated more environmental damage. After 10 more months of trying to make this thing happen, including multiple announcements and schemes for its implementation, the proposal has lost so much momentum that Politico reports Trump and Energy Secretary Perry can’t even find enthusiasm for the plan among Trump’s White House staff.
The White House has shelved the plan amid opposition from the president’s own advisers on the National Security Council and National Economic Council, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.
The scheme required utilities to make a portion of the electrical grid “safer” by keeping 90 days worth of fuel on site. Since windmills and solar plants can’t stockpile the wind or sun, they were left out. And since natural gas power plants generally get their fuel from pipelines with only a small amount of on-site storage, even they were left out. Truthfully, the whole thing was a transparent scheme to slow the closing of coal plants. But it hasn’t worked. Coal was down from 50 percent of U.S. power in 2005 to 30 percent in 2017, and it has fallen at an even sharper rate in 2018 as more than 11 gigawatts of coal-fire capacity have gone offline.
TVA has already closed 32 of the 59 coal-fired units it previously operated and is now planning to close the last of its giant 1.1Gw coal-fired generators at Paradise, Kentucky, along with another unit in Tennessee. The reason for the closures: TVA has listed these coal plants as the least efficient, most expensive to operate, and most expensive to maintain.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/17/1805142/-Trump-Perry-Plan-to-force-utilities-to-burn-coal-can-t-even-find-support-in-the-Trump-White-House
= new reply since forum marked as read