The CEO of the largest public utility company in the entire country says coal is not coming back because it's not the cheapest way to provide energy.
I think most of us already know that, but Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Bill Johnson also said something else that I want to highlight.
Trump's war on regulations isn't going to make a difference because regulations had no impact on the decision.
Johnson said the retirement of many of TVA's coal plants was the cheapest way to serve customers, which include more than 9 million people in seven southeastern states. Natural gas prices, not regulation, caused the recent downturn for coal, Johnson said.
"Our statutory duty is to produce electricity at the lowest feasible rate," Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And when we decided to close the coal plants, that was the math we were doing. We weren't trying to comply with the Clean Power Plan or anything else. What's the cheapest way to serve the customer? It turned out to be retiring those coal plants."
They "weren't trying to comply with the Clean Power Plan," he says, because the Clean Power Plan was never actually implemented.
Many people, including, I suspect, a significant number of liberals, probably don't realize that some of President Obama's most significant regulatory policies, from the regulation of Methane emissions to the Clean Power Plan, have been held up in court for years and have had little if any impact on the energy industry.
Left to its own devices, the infallible, revered, all-powerful and holy hand of the Free Market has guided the energy sector toward cleaner and cheaper sources of energy.
The War on Coal, as it were, ended without a single shot being fired.