Sixteen Tons Part 3: The Future of Coal

Part 1, Part 2

One of Donald Trump's campaign promises was that he would bring back American coal jobs. His administration has eliminated a bunch of Obama presidency regulations on mining and energy. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt declared the "war on coal" to be over.

All the Trump administration efforts to save coal are going nowhere.

A bulldozer pushing coal. [Image source]

In 1923, there were 863,000 coal miners in America. Business was booming, and countless towns were built on coal money. Today, however, there are only around 50,000 coal miners in the United States- the lowest point in 125 years. What happened?

First off, coal mines were mechanized over time. The better the machinery got, the more coal each miner could haul out of the mine. The overwhelming majority of coal jobs were lost to mechanization, and those aren't coming back. Mechanized coal mining is both safer and more profitable than hand mining coal. If Trump thought THOSE jobs were coming back, well...

US coal mining employment from 1980-2014. [Image source]

Coal jobs have continued declining, however, at a rate much higher than that of increases in coal mining productivity coming from technical advances. It's not due to declining coal supplies- at the current rate of usage, we have at least 250 years of coal left. Trump and many of his allies have claimed again and again that there's a War on Coal, but the actual reasons for the decline are much more complicated, and it's mostly due to lowering demand for coal.

First off, there's China. China has been steadily increasing their coal production over the years. They've gone from being a net importer to a net exporter- China is now by far the biggest coal producing country in the world. They're producing more and at cheaper prices than we are. Of course, even their coal industry, having literally just gone into full production, is already in decline.

Coal production by year among the top 5 coal producing countries. [Image source]

Many of America's markets for coal are also moving steadily away from coal consumption. This is due to a wide range of reasons. First off, while Trump often claims that environmental regulation is hurting coal, in reality, competition from green technologies is often more significant. In India, for instance, wind and solar energy costs now cost 20% less than coal, in great part due to technological advancements in solar panels and wind turbines, along with the aging and expensive infrastructure in many of their coal plants. Hydroelectric energy is also becoming more important- building huge dams is essentially a badge of honor or coming of age ceremony for governments, despite being one of the more environmentally damaging non fossil fuel energy sources.

Of course, Trump isn't entirely wrong about environmental regulations hurting the coal market, but most of that damage comes from other nations no longer buying our coal over environmental concerns. The US is still fairly dependent on coal, though, at least for the short term.

The biggest enemy of coal consumption right now, though, isn't green energy or mechanization- it's natural gas. Fracking has led to massively cheaper natural gas in the market. Since April 2015, natural gas has surpassed coal as the most common method of electricity generation in the United States. Coal mining companies simply aren't staying competitive.

A 1936 coal mine. [Image source]

Trump recently claimed that 45,000 coal mining jobs had been added since he became president. This... well, it's not true. Only 8,000 coal sector jobs were added in 2017, and of those, only 1,200 were coal mining jobs. Even experts from inside the industry agree that the increase in coal sales and jobs is largely due to 2017's unseasonably cold El Nino related weather.

On the flip side of the equation, the Trump administration's policies towards the solar industry may have actually cost nearly 10,000 American jobs in 2017. He imposed a 30% tariff on imported solar panels this year, but the lead-up to that decision caused massive uncertainty in the solar industry. 10,000 jobs seems an absurd amount until you realize how huge the solar industry is. The solar industry in America employs well over a quarter of a million people. That's 43 percent of the entire power generation workforce in America. Traditional fossil fuel workers make up only 22 percent of said workforce.

An exposed coal seam. [Image source]

Many in Trump's administration also recognize the decline of coal as irreversible. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously shot down the Trump administration proposal to subsidize coal burning power plants (and nuclear power plants) last month. Development of "clean coal" has largely fallen by the wayside as well. It's touted benefits are slim on the ground, and it makes an already unprofitable commodity even less profitable.

Coal has had a stranglehold on industrial civilization for a long, long time. It was absolutely essential. This is what let coal mines get away with the rampant labor abuses, environmental destruction, and profiteering for so long. That stranglehold has finally begun to break, though. And even if, for some reason, coal had an opportunity to come back, the most responsible action our civilization could take is rejecting it.

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Bibliography:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/4/16848650/trump-coal-industry-2017
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/01/30/india-coal-power-is-about-to-crash-65-of-existing-coal-costs-more-than-new-wind-and-solar/#7dd6747a4c0f
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/trumps-coal-bailout-is-dead/550037/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/climate/coal-murray-trump-memo.html
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31672
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-solar-power-employs-more-people-more-oil-coal-gas-combined-donald-trump-green-energy-fossil-fuels-a7541971.html
http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-policies-are-costing-10k-jobs-americas-solar-power-industry-says-study-800745
http://fortune.com/2018/01/31/coal-mining-jobs-donald-trump-state-of-the-union/
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-has-only-delivered-1200-coal-mining-jobs-despite-claiming-have-751885