Trump’s Imaginary War on
Coal has just Begun
By Thomas Schueneman
Under the cover of “energy independence,” U.S.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for a rewrite of the
EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
The Plan is the cornerstone of U.S. commitment to curbing
emissions under the Paris climate
agreement, so the rewrite represents a significant rollback of U.S.
global warming mitigation as a whole.
Unlike the rhetoric surrounding health care, no replacement
carbon regulation is under consideration.
In an examination I did last week for TriplePundit, I reviewed an early draft copy of the executive order, which cited conclusions from a report prepared by NERA Economic Consulting as the reason for the rollback.
NERA researchers claimed the Plan will “cost up to $39 billion a
year,” causing “double-digit electricity price increases,” all for “meaningless
environmental impacts.” The NERA study was funded by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
The damage doesn’t stop there. The executive order also
overturns limits on coal leasing on public lands — the impacts of
which will likely not be felt for decades. Given the reality of the coal
industry, which even supporters of Trump’s coal policy fear Trump doesn’t really understand, there is little demand for
additional coal leases on public land. And there likely won’t be until the
2030s.
The order also eliminates consideration of the social cost of carbon for government agencies. Up until
now, government officials were required to consider the economic impact of
avoided environmental pollution when green-lighting new initiatives. The
guidelines were originally drafted by the Ronald Reagan administration and
strengthened under Barack Obama.
Energy independence?
Combined with the proposed budget released earlier this month, the impact
of this morning’s executive order is sweeping and harkens back to a world
without environmental protections.
The assumptions upon which Trump and his advisors justify such
draconian measures are themselves grounded in faulty data, according to
research from Noah Kaufman of the World Resource Institute, a former NERA
employee.
The NERA research assumes that the consistent, year-on-year
growth of renewable energy –and rapidly expanding capacity and falling prices —
will not continue, which is extremely unlikely, Kaufman says. NERA relied
heavily on data from the Energy Information Agency, which has an odd penchant
for consistently underestimating the growth of the renewable sector.
Kaufman and his team cross-checked the data with four other
models to test the justifications in the NERA report. Only one report,
the EPA’s own study, came down in the middle of the estimates, apparently the
most detached from a preconceived outcome.
Kaufman stresses the importance of transparency when using paid
research as a basis for policy decisions.
“When modelers have a favored result in mind, it’s not so hard
to take these models and produce the result that they want to produce,” Kaufman
told TriplePundit.
“It’s so important
to find an independent group for these studies”
To that end, Kaufman considers a report released by the Rhodium Group as an example of using clearly stated,
moderate assumptions based on rigorous and non-biased data. This data readily
supports the economic benefits of environmental regulations, unlike the biased data
used in the NERA report.
The Paris
Agreement, committed in name only
At his 2006 State of the Union address 11 years ago, former
President George W. Bush, no particular friend to climate or alternative energy
research, famously said: “America is addicted to oil.”
Granted, the situation was different then: The fracking boom was
still years in the future, and the “era of cheap natural gas” had not yet
begun. But his words are still instructive.
Bush referred to “zero-emission coal plants, revolutionary solar
and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.” Ten years on and we
have, in fact, delivered on revolutionary solar and wind technologies. America
stands poised as the world leader for ushering the beginning of the end
for oil and all fossil fuels.
Today, Donald Trump may end all that, setting in motion a
reversal of support for environmental protection, climate and earth
science, and basic energy research. All, apparently, in the misguided or
cynical assertion that it will “bring coal jobs back.”
It won’t. It threatens our national economy, credibility and the
future of everyone on the planet. If the Trump administration remains a
signatory in the Paris Agreement, it is in name only. Credibility is lost from
a country that sees the future in attempting to go back to the past.
All for one more hit of our fossil fuel addiction. It can’t go
on forever.