Trump is trying, and the miners know that. But it’s hard to bring back coal-mining jobs when nanny-state officials are closing down the companies that buy the coal. From the article:
“In the last five years, 483 coal-fired electric generating units in the US have closed or announced their retirement.”
Weren’t most of those on the left coast? Which explains the brown outs happening over there.
The irony for PA is it's not environmentalists or regulators killing coal plants, it's fracking.
Coal is dying not because of environmental regulations, but because natural gas is a hell of a a lot cheaper and more efficient for power generation. Pennsylvania is a perfect example of how one commodity (coal) gets displaced by another one (natural gas) that’s extracted in the same place.
But it’s hard to bring back coal-mining jobs when nanny-state officials are closing down the companies that buy the coal.
The number one enemy of coal is not the nanny state but the free market. Advances in fracking technology have made natural gas much cheaper than coal. Those jobs aren't ever coming back unless President Trump shuts down the natural gas industry. It is not the job of government to pick winners and losers in the Coal vs. Gas wars any more than it would have been to choose between the buggy whip industry and the auto industry in the 1920's. If government has a role to play at all it is retraining former coal workers to succeed at some other job.
Meanwhile, demanding more electric vehicles...
I’m really glad I can use propane for heating.
https://btuanalytics.com/power-and-renewables/coal-to-gas-switching-in-2016/
Prices are even lower now than in 2016 per MMBtu for natural gas. Coal even at $40 ton can’t compete with $2 MMBtu gas. Add in the required emissions controls which for coal are absolutely correct for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulates, lead, Mercury,arsenic and uranium particulates all of which are found in large quantities in coal ash and smoke. The ash is so loaded with metals the DOE is looking to literally mine them for the rare earth metals and uranium as well.