Trump’s promise to bring back the coal industry to restore American jobs might be stalled by the discovery of shale gas and growth of renewables. Despite deleting all climate change references on the White house website and launching an ‘energy plan’ to revive the coal industry, energy experts are quick to explain why this policy is impossible. Energy demand in the US has not grown much throughout the years, much of it due to the increase in energy efficiency. Since energy demand does not increase with time, energy sources are easily replaced by those who are most flexible and economical. The shrinking of the coal market due to its high labour cost and inflexibility is inevitable. It is also no surprise that the US has since shut down 40 gigawatts of coal powered plant due to the adverse effect of coal pollution on human health and the climate. The five core clean energy technologies considered are solar, wind, LED lights, batteries, and electric cars have shown major cost reductions since 2008. The combination of smart government policies and technological advancements encourages cheap prices for renewables, flipping the tables for the global power market. Wind and solar often face major setbacks due to their unstable nature of energy production. However, this problem may now be obsolete due to the huge price decline of battery storage devices and large improvement in battery storage efficiency. “The clean energy revolution is too often always assumed to be something that would come along in 10 to 20 years. The message is: look around, it’s happening now.” Energy secretary Earnest Moniz said after his department released a new report detailing green energy costs and generation.
BNEF chair Michael Liebreich also chimes in to predict the possibility of government subsidy on coal powered plants rather than renewables in the near future. He also tweeted about price of solar in Chile which is 2.91 cents per kWh starting from August 2016. The price of coal in comparison is twice as high. So Trump might try his very best to bring the coal industry back on the basis that renewables is simply unaffordable. But the reality is quite different. By Tsia Shu Wei
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