In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump squeezed in a brief boast about his administration’s energy policy.
Trump’s perennial “war on coal” claim, fact-checked
There was never a war on coal, and Trump didn’t make the US an energy exporter.
Umair Irfan was a correspondent at Vox writing about climate change, energy policy, and science. He is a regular contributor to the radio program Science Friday. Prior to Vox, he was a reporter for ClimateWire at E&E News.
“We have ended the war on American energy — and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” he said. “We are now very proudly an exporter of energy to the world.”
These statements are misleading on several counts. President Obama didn’t wage a “war on coal,” as Trump has often claimed. (Read Vox’s David Roberts in-depth explainer on this.) Trump hasn’t made the US an energy exporter. He also doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on what “clean coal” is.
The United States has exported coal, oil, natural gas, and energy technology for decades, and in recent years, the amount of energy the country is exporting has started to catch up to the amount of energy the United States brings in.
As you can see in this chart, the import curve inflected in the mid-2000s and the US is now on track to be a net energy exporter, according to most projections.
Energy Information Administration
But that switch hasn’t happened yet, and likely won’t until 2026.
As for coal, mining jobs have crashed from a high of 800,000 workers in the 1920s to about 76,000 today. Meanwhile, coal consumption is falling too.
Automation in coal mining and competition from other energy sources like natural gas and renewables have caused the sector’s decline; regulations have played only a small role. Coal production and its share of the electricity mix is falling too, largely coinciding with the shale gas boom.
Energy Information Administration
Trump’s administration has done little to stop that decline.
Trump seems confused about what “clean coal” actually means. He’s used the term to describe the process by which some mines wash or pretreat coal before it is burned in power plants. But clean coal more commonly refers to coal power plants that capture their greenhouse gas emissions. Trump’s proposed budget for the US Department of Energy slashes funding for research and development in this technology from $200 million to $35 million.
The broader point is that market forces, namely changing fuel prices, have done more to shape the energy sector as it stands today than any policy levers that the Trump administration is pulling.
Despite the desperate effort to resuscitate coal, including a push to undo proposals to regulate greenhouse gases, the industry is going to continue to founder. In 2017 alone, utilities announced the closures of 27 coal-fired power plants, totalling 22 gigawatts of generation capacity.
Even though the White House announced stiff tariffs on imported solar panels earlier this month, the solar industry is still poised to expand, with solar installation jobs becoming the fastest-growing employment sector over the next ten years.
