According to data from the United States government and Thomson Reuters US coal-fired power plants shut down at the second-fastest pace on record in 2019, despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to prop up the industry.
Power companies retired or converted roughly 15,100 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired electricity generation, enough to power about 15 million homes, according to the data, which included preliminary statistics from the Energy Information Administration and Reuters reporting.
Reuters reports that was second only to the record 19,300MW shut in 2015 during President Barack Obama’s administration.
The replacement of coal with power generation from natural gas and renewable energy has cut total US carbon emissions in four of the past five years.
Gas emits about half the carbon dioxide, a leading contributor to global warming, as coal.
The coal industry has been in steep decline for a decade due to competition from cheap and abundant gas and subsidised solar and wind energy, along with rising public concern over coal’s contribution to climate change.
President Trump has downplayed climate change threats and sought to revive the coal industry to fulfill pledges to voters in coal mining states such as West Virginia and Wyoming, mainly by rolling back President Obama-era environmental protections.
Still, since he entered office in 2017, an estimated 39,000MW of coal-fired power plant capacity has shut.
Reuters reports if that trend continues, more coal plants will have shut during the first four years (2017-2020) of the Trump administration, an estimated 46,600MW, than during President Obama’s second term (2013-2016), around 43,100MW.
Last week, Tri-State Generation and Transmission announced it would accelerate the retirement of two of its coal-fired power plants in Colorado and New Mexico as both states pursue ambitious targets to slash carbon emissions.
In 2019, US emissions linked to climate change fell 2.1 per cent as coal-fired electricity output dropped 18 per cent to the lowest level since 1975, according to an estimate by independent researcher Rhodium Group.
However, Rhodium said further big emissions reductions from coal retirements would be harder to achieve because many of the remaining facilities are commercially competitive.
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