Trump’s coal man racing clock to bail out plants on consumers’ dime
President Donald Trump is on the verge of subsidizing coal plants that would otherwise be driven out of business by cheaper, cleaner natural gas.
A plan that would leave consumers footing a potential multibillion-dollar bill is expected Dec. 11, and Trump couldn’t have chosen a more enthusiastic person to get it done: Neil Chatterjee, a Republican from coal country, who has spent years brokering seemingly impossible deals for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Now he’s cutting the biggest deal of his career — and he’s running out of time to do it.
His role as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency that oversees U.S. power markets, is temporary, with a replacement waiting in the wings. With precious little time, he’s pushing a proposal to bail out failing coal plants, paid for by electricity customers.
In several interviews, Chatterjee laid out his strategy for success, revealing one likely framework for keeping money-losing coal plants alive. He describes it as “the most significant proposed change to market rules in decades.”
Trump made the rebirth of coal, unpopular because of its expense and its contribution to climate change, a central theme of his 2016 campaign. Since then, coal magnate Robert Murray has appealed directly to the president to halt the wave of coal-plant retirements. Murray said that without immediate government intervention, power generator FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. will be forced into bankruptcy, followed by his own company, Murray Energy Corp. Some other energy-generating companies oppose the payments.
Coal, once the largest source of U.S. electricity generation, has seen its share of the power market dwindle to less than a third as natural gas emerged as a cheaper alternative. Between 2002 and 2016, more than 59 gigawatts of coal-fired power — enough to supply 59 million homes a year — went offline, thinning the economic prospects for coal producers.
Murray is arguing that subsidies would halt coal-plant retirements and keep 6,500 miners on the job. FirstEnergy says the payments would bolster the reliability of America’s electricity grid. The plan also includes payments to nuclear plants which, along with coal generators, can store fuel on-site.
Under Chatterjee’s preferred approach, coal and nuclear plants would collect monthly payments from grid operators to keep them in the black, regardless of how much energy they generate. Those payments would come from electricity customers, primarily in the Midwest, who could see their monthly bills rise as soon as the spring.