Trump’s latest plan to revive coal power: Make the military buy it

The administration's "reasoning" for doing so has little connection to reality.

See full article...

 

[Hydrargyrum]

Military buys loads of coal. Then what? They have nothing is place to utilize it. It's like you and I forced to buy rocket engines.

The actual executive order is forcing the DoD to buy electricity from the coal-fired power plants (definitionally at above-market rates, because if coal-fired electricity was cheaper the DoD would buy it anyway). The DoD is never going to be in possession of the coal.

 

[xWidget]

Obama (being a Democrat) didn't like it.
Everything Obama did, Trump has to kill. Or do it even bigger and better (Like the peace prize).
Obama tried to replace coal, so that plan has to go.

Correction: Obama (being Black) didn't like it.

 

[Michillaneous]

The extraction and delivery of coal in the United States employees about 50,000 people. Probably a little less.

To put that in perspective, about six times that number of people work at a McDonald’s Franchise in the same country.

More people work at Menards

 

[BitingGoatGruff]

Can the military obligate itself to purchases beyond the current fiscal year? I’d think Congress should like to weigh in on that decision..

 

[Marakai]

I would love to see data on what percentage of members of the US military, active, reserve or retired, voted for these people. Especially compared to the general voting populace.

And whether they have any regrets, in light of that drunkard and his imbecilic master now running the show.

 

[TimeToTilt]

"locking the military into contacts that extend beyond his term in 2029".

Yeah but like... He has shown that contacts don't mean anything if the executive just decides they don't. Laws don't mean anything.

Remember all those times we were told progress is slow, by the responsible adults in the room? Can't wait for that same can't do attitude to get back in power and maybe we will rename the gulf of Mexico by 2100.

 

[numerobis]

Will they be subsidizing? Or just buying a tiny share of already existing output?

Roughly speaking, the coal plants currently bid on a market, and if there's enough other generators bidding in under the price that coal plants can turn a profit at, they turn the plant off because nobody wants to buy. Coal generators only operate at about 45% of their capacity these days (it varies constantly, but it's been around there for a few years).

The PPA means there's someone who will buy the output no matter what -- it puts a floor on the price that coal plant can get. So they can keep the plant operating more often.

 

[numerobis]

Don Lemon is a radical leftist terrorist because he deserves indictment for filming a protest at a church and the Attorney General of the United States hurls slurs and insults instead of answering yes and no questions in a hearing of oversight. Whilst deflecting questions out of her turn to speak. Some conspiracy theorists keep the election was stolen in 2020 and nobody comments at the DDOJ (Department of Denial of Justice). Sorry I made an A in civics class.
Then when asked by congressman about the Epstein filez FU by the DOJ sights how good crime data is good says it's because of ICE and Donald Trump.
I think I wasted five hours watching just another zealot.

Sad I live just outside Fulton Georgia with a gay stepbrother who couldn't say he was gay and when I asked him in 2022 if he thought the election was stolen he said I don't know.
I told him I stole the election. I should call him and tell him the statute of limitations has run out.
But he was afraid to come out so he was vulnerable and that would be cruel.

Is this a call for help?

 

[numerobis]

Can the military obligate itself to purchases beyond the current fiscal year? I’d think Congress should like to weigh in on that decision..

Yes? Multi-year purchases are pretty common.

 

[arsisloam]

Every general who sees this order is going to sigh deeply, look at their backlog of climate change related base maintenance, and sigh again.

 

[e.halap]

When is this cunt dying? Asking for a planet

 

[wawah]

While china trying to escape coal, USSA want to make coal great again? Also wtf is clean beautiful coal. . . Those words doesn't belong to one sentence

 

[steelcobra]

While china trying to escape coal, USSA want to make coal great again? Also wtf is clean beautiful coal. . . Those words doesn't belong to one sentence

It's crap he was saying at the beginning of his first term, when the coal industry themselves were admitting that a push for more coal wouldn't add more jobs anyways.

 

[alanmies]

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but at any rate:


View: https://youtu.be/IfvBx4D0Cms


(Hank Green is great, if you're looking for some more rational YT content, he should be among your top picks)

 

[TheBaconson]

He really is going for the handmaids tale isn’t he.

 

[Bondles_9]

Remember all those times we were told progress is slow, by the responsible adults in the room? Can't wait for that same can't do attitude to get back in power and maybe we will rename the gulf of Mexico by 2100.

At some point the US is going to have to elect a government on a platform of full-blown de-Ba'athification, or this is just going to keep getting worse.

 

[flunk]

Coal is the most expensive way to make power. It's dead everywhere you don't have huge subsidies. So if you still have coal power plants you can pretty much guarantee that you're paying through the nose via your taxes to subsidize that obsolete power source.

 

[poke 532810]

never any mention of the coal plants that froze up during the texas freeze

The article touched on the issues with coal plants in Texas in passing:

This seemingly ignores Texas’ recent experience, in which coal plants contributed significantly to the collapse of the state grid, having gone offline for a wide range of reasons.

There is at least one military base that has a coal-fired power plant: Ft Wainwright, in the interior of Alaska, near Fairbanks. It’s well beyond its designed lifespan and they’re planning to replace it with a gas-fired plant. Or maybe not.

 

[Bondles_9]

Coal is the most expensive way to make power. It's dead everywhere you don't have huge subsidies. So if you still have coal power plants you can pretty much guarantee that you're paying through the nose via your taxes to subsidize that obsolete power source.

Not quite - it's one of the more expensive ways to make new power capacity (I think nuclear probably still holds the crown there), but it can be relatively cost-effective to keep running existing plants if you have a nearby coal mine and aren't paying for emissions. Still dumb as hell to actively prefer it to alternatives, though.

 

[pnellesen]

Just when you think the American president can't come up with a stupider idea.

Don't worry, you can rest assured that tomorrow he'll say something stupider than he did today, which was stupider than what he said the day before.

It's stupidity all the way down.

 

[pnellesen]

Coal has a mythical place in the American heart, a job where men needed little education to provide a good living for their families, sacrificing their health for the good of the country.

The reality is that we have almost no coal miners left. The great coal seams in the East are mostly long mined out for the economically viable types that most plants are designed to use and most countries will accept for import. There are fewer than 40,000 people working in coal mining, and only about 13,000 of them are categorized as extraction workers. Here are the BLS numbers. Coal is being kept alive in the American minds by visions of days decades in the past, while coal miners themselves represent only 0.008% of all people employed in the country.

Uhhh, we were told there would be no fact checking, mmmkay?

 

[Fatesrider]

Please… it’s like you have never heard of Trump!

Well, to be fair, Trump isn't the one coming up with these ideas.

His Russian puppet masters, controlled by their Chinese puppet masters, are the ones telling him what to do.

 

[ArcanePariah]

Given what DOGE was able to do, what exactly prevents the next Democrat coming in and simply cancelling the contracts, using the exact same logic of "We are the government, tough shit"?

 

[AceRimmer]

So much for cutting inefficient, wasteful government spending, huh?

It's not wasteful if it makes the Fox News crowd cheer wildly.

 

[Narayana]

Looking forward to the new coal-fired destroyers and aircraft carriers.

It would be cool with a Steam Punk navy. Very cool.
Utterly stupid, but cool.

And since the US the idiot country of the world, so I give it a non zero chance of them actually doing it

 

[raschumacher]

Trump declares that everyone will change their underwear every Tuesday …

"Underwear to be worn on the outside, so we can check."
- Woody Allen's Bananas

 

[raschumacher]

Don't leave out the Air Force!

Coal-fired ICBMs!

 

[raschumacher]

Assuming that the next Congress reasserts its Constitutional power of the purse any such directive can be voided. (Don't forget to vote Democrat.)

 

[steelcobra]

Not quite - it's one of the more expensive ways to make new power capacity (I think nuclear probably still holds the crown there), but it can be relatively cost-effective to keep running existing plants if you have a nearby coal mine and aren't paying for emissions. Still dumb as hell to actively prefer it to alternatives, though.

Coal plants are relatively easy to convert to LNG...and many have been by now.

 

[TheOldChevy]

We are back to steampunk time: coal powered tanks and airplanes ?

 

[JerryLove]

And the next president orders what to happen to those?

 

[Penguin Warlord]

He's literally dooming every living creature on this planet.

It's time for action. Get in the streets and protest.

 

[shayne.oneill]

Can the military obligate itself to purchases beyond the current fiscal year? I’d think Congress should like to weigh in on that decision..

The problem is, contracts are harder to break than they are to sign. Even if an incoming administration where to cancel these contracts, they'd potentially be on the hook for billions in fees for breaking them.

Well, unless they passed a law saying they aren't. But that could face challenges by a hostile supreme court intent on riding the coal pole.

 

[Lerxt]

The first thought I had reading this was "another example of getting the government you deserve".

 

[AdrianS]

Trump declares that everyone will change their underwear every Tuesday …

Whether they need to or not.

 

[richten]

I'm calling it now, the Trump-class battleship will be a coal powered dreadnought. Going all in back to the age of empires.

 

[alainchammas]

That’s what happens when you put political appointees in positions of power rather than experts of their respective fields

 

[steelcobra]

The problem is, contracts are harder to break than they are to sign. Even if an incoming administration where to cancel these contracts, they'd potentially be on the hook for billions in fees for breaking them.

Well, unless they passed a law saying they aren't. But that could face challenges by a hostile supreme court intent on riding the coal pole.

On the other hand, an EO is little more than a policy memo, and anything that forces budgetary changes has to go through Congress. An EO saying "use more coal-sourced power" is going to butt up against a ton of pre-existing law about improving energy independents and cleanliness.

 

[leonremi]

Looking forward to the new coal-fired destroyers and aircraft carriers.

Wasn't Trump rambling about battleships too?