While the rich Western countries have been cutting themselves from coal for the last twenty years, Donald Trump is now trying to take the US in the opposite direction.
The president gives more orders to dig and burn what he calls “beautiful, clean coal”.
Good
From where? What is “good” about coal is that it is cheap, reliable and abundant.
It still offers more than one -third of global electricity and the US has masses.
Supporters say that existing coal power plants only provide the grill of approximately 40% of the time, which can be easily increased by interrupting the arrangement – Already started.
Read More: The main coal manufacturer who wants to leave it on the ground
Bad
But coal is a disaster for climate – carbon dioxide and abundant air pollution heating with more planets than oil and gas.
As a result, since 2008, richer, in Western countries (including the US), has helped with the fall of clean power costs.
So the Earth (including the US) He committed coal “gradually” At the Cop26 Climate Summit in Glasgow in 2021.
But about three years and the world Electrical appetite is larger than expected.
In the US, the electricity demand is now increasing at speed after years of plateau.
It was directed not only by energy -hungry data centers that tend to grab the headlines, but by things such as cloud computing, electric vehicles and a revitalized industrial sector.
BritishThe United States wants AI companies to build there to support economic growth and compete with China.
Mr. Trump sees coal as a cheap way to strengthen all this. “If he can have China, why can’t we do it?” – or at least that’s what he says on social media.
Donald Trump said that the US should open more coal forces like China. Pic: Truth Social
China continued to build Points of New Coal Power Plants (Although it is also a building Sun in quantities and wind power).
But Thinktank Chatham House Dan Quigin, “Only because they have a lot of coal and many renewable energy in China, it does not mean that you can do the same in the United States,” he says.
“Apart from something, the Chinese economy has grown greatly and has grown over the years and continues to grow.”
Ugly
Here is the potentially ugly part for Mr. Trump: It is possible to have little effects of orders.
Gas, wind and solar energy in the US are largely cheaper than coal power and are more attractive investments.
“From an economic point of view, in terms of investment, coal are orders away from alternative energy sources,” Energy Consultancy in Boston said.
“Executive orders can create some buzzing in the near term. But you need long certainty for such investments and shifts, and it is not possible that we will go from an executive order there.”
Mr. Trump tried this before, and during the last presidency of 2017, he tried to revive the industry. Since then, a new large coal power plant has not been built in the US – the economy is not just stacking, Berman says.
The existing plants could see that their life reached after this news.
But everything seems to be longer than a return for coal.
As in Mr. Trump, the future is extremely unpredictable. However, like other energy announcements, the last It should be taken with a pinch of salt.
