Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that could represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.
The Energy Department would exercise emergency authority under a pair of federal laws to direct the operators to purchase electricity or electric generation capacity from at-risk facilities, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The agency also is making plans to establish a "Strategic Electric Generation Reserve" with the aim of promoting the national defense and maximizing domestic energy supplies.
“Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity,” says a 41-page draft memo circulated before a National Security Council meeting on the subject Friday.
The plan cuts to the heart of a debate over the reliability and resiliency of a rapidly evolving U.S. electricity grid. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable electricity. As nuclear and coal plants are decommissioned, regulators have been grappling with how to ensure that the nation’s power system can withstand extreme weather events and cyber-attacks.
Although the memo describes a planned Energy Department directive, there was no indication President Donald Trump had signed off on the action nor when any order might be issued. The document, dated May 29 and distributed Thursday, is marked as a "draft," which is "not for further distribution," and could be used by administration officials to justify the intervention.
While administration officials are still deciding on their final strategy -- and may yet decide against aggressive action -- the memo represents the Energy Department’s latest, most fully developed plan to intervene on behalf of coal and nuclear power plants, pitched to the president’s top security advisers.
Energy Department representatives did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The notion that solar and wind power are unreliable to the point of
constituting a potential threat to national security is ludicrous, especially when pitched against the proven dangers of nuclear power.
Of course this is Trump paying off energy executives who supported him, because this is what Trump does. Paul Waldman:
You might think that Republicans would be outraged about this. We’re talking about the federal government not just “picking winners and losers,” something free-marketeers claim to abhor, but literally ordering utilities to buy a certain kind of fuel, which just happens to be the kind that creates the most pollution and in many cases costs more (don’t worry about the inclusion of nuclear energy; this is really about coal).
But Republicans are not outraged, because as former House speaker John Boehner said yesterday, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party.” And the rule in the Trump party is: Reward those who serve you, and punish those who don’t.
Any ideological considerations must take a back seat to that principle. Sometimes it means cutting regulations, and sometimes it means increasing regulations; it just depends on who the winners and losers are. Liberals may say mockingly that this proposed rule smacks of socialism, but it isn’t guided by any kind of philosophy of governing. It’s a payoff.
In 2016, Trump repeatedly promised the residents of states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania that he was going to revive the coal industry. He went to West Virginia, donned a helmet, pantomimed digging with his lips pursed, and said, “For those miners, get ready because you’re going to be working your a–––– off.” Everyone cheered, and it’s hard to blame them, since many of their communities have been devastated by the steady loss of what were once well-paid jobs with good benefits (negotiated by a union, of course). Unlike Clinton, who accepted the reality of coal’s decline and wanted to help those communities find other ways of reviving themselves, Trump simply said that he’d bring back coal.
But the idea that we could eliminate some environmental regulations and thereby bring all the coal jobs back was always ludicrous. Estimates of the number of coal jobs in America vary slightly (see here or here), but they generally come in between 50,000 and 75,000, which means that there are more Americans who work at Arby’s than there are in the entire coal industry. That’s the product of a long-term decline attributable mostly to automation (you don’t need to send 1,000 miners down into the hole with pickaxes anymore) and competition, especially from natural gas, the price of which has plummeted with the fracking boom.
No reasonable person thinks that the coal jobs are coming back, but this was one of the most explicit promises Trump made, and if he doesn’t deliver, it will make everything he said in 2016 look like a scam. And if the market no longer wants coal, Trump will force power plants to buy it.
Trump made promises. He will keep them by abusing the powers of his office, no matter how much damage it does to the country and the planet, because
only his supporters matter to him. The rest of us are just collateral damage, we're not even Americans, we're not even human, we're "animals". The irony is that his promises will damage his supporters the most, but as long as they can be convinced that those who are the "enemy" and didn't support Trump are in an even worse place, they'll vote for Trump and the GOP every time.
The constant dehumanization and demonization of the Obama coalition has metastasized into today's GOP. We are chattel to be ruled, kine to be slaughtered by Trump and his forces, and they want to be on the "winning" side even as it costs them everything.
History says this road leads to apocalypse, and we're running out of time to prevent it.
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