Coal energy plan – cracks emerge in Trump’s cabinet
FOR ALL Donald Trump’s efforts to revive coal, market forces and some of his own supporters are vying to write their own version of America’s energy future.
Divisions persist among the president’s supporters – and even within his own Cabinet – about whether to continue subsidies for wind and solar power, enact a carbon tax, remain party to the Paris climate accord and plenty of other issues that will shape the US energy landscape.
“Seventy five per cent of Trump supporters like renewables and want to advance renewables,” Debbie Dooley, a tea party organiser and solar energy activist, said at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York on Monday. “The conversation has changed. You have to have the right message. Talk about energy freedom and choice. The light bulb will go off.”
Trump may be resolutely committed to fossil fuels, but the economic reality is renewables are now among the cheapest sources of electricity. Wind and solar were the biggest sources of power added to US grids three years running, becoming key sources of jobs in rural America. That’s created cleanenergy constituencies in North Carolina, Texas and other parts of the country that supported Trump in November.
Still, there are enough members of Trump’s Cabinet who deny the basic science of global warming that there is little, if any, chance the administration will enthusiastically support clean energy. Instead, the debate is likely to hinge on whether the president will try to actively reverse market forces allowing wind and solar to flourish.
That tug- of-war will play out in the weeks to come at the White House, in corporate board rooms and at economic summits in Italy and Germany. On Tuesday, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry will shed light on the debate at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance gathering, which also will feature Myron Ebell, an avowed climate- change denier who headed Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team.
Ebell said global warming and the advantages of clean power are largely a myth perpetuated over the last half century by financiers and scientists he dubbed the “climate industrial complex.”
“President Eisenhower in his farewell address not only talked about the military industrial complex, but he talked about the technological scientific complex as a problem as well,” Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Centre for Energy and Environment, said at the conference.
In many ways little has changed in America’s energy markets since Trump took office. States including California, New York and Massachusetts continue to move forward with aggressive policies to cut carbon emissions. Anheuser-Busch InBev, Apple, Amazon.com, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other companies continue to power facilities with wind and solar energy.
Even so, federal policy matters.
Despite the president’s executive orders, much of his energy blueprint remains a work in progress.
That includes his position on tax credits for wind and solar, how energy fits into a federal infrastructure plan and how, if at all, the administration plans to keep uneconomical coal plants open.
So investors will listen closely as Perry – who oversaw record expansions of wind power as Texas governor – steps to the microphone at this week’s conference. — WP-Bloomberg