A Coal Story -- February 17, 2017

Updates

Later, 1:12 p.m. Central Time: Scott Pruitt was confirmed. Talk about an incredibly busy day for the president. He flies down to South Carolina. Tours the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner. He took his two grandchildren on the helicopter that he flew on while their parents flew on the other helicopter. How much fun was that? Now, as I understand it, he will fly down to Mar-A-Lago. I thought he was going to sign another executive order today, but maybe not.
 

Original Post

 

"They" say that the "EPA" executive order that President Trump will sign later today -- if Scott Pruitt is confirmed as the head of the EPA -- will literally suck the air out of the room.

One wonders.

Today in The Wall Street Journal: Arizona plant poses first test of Trump's support for coal sector. Navajo Nation president appeals to the White House to facility from shutdown.

President Donald Trump’s promise to help the coal industry could be facing its first big test: the decision earlier this week to close a large Arizona coal-burning power plant, and a demand that Mr. Trump prevent that shutdown.

Majority owners of the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., one of the biggest coal plants in the country, said this week they won’t keep running the plant after 2019 because it is more economic to buy natural-gas-fired electricity than to generate power by burning coal. These kinds of market-driven decisions, rather than regulations, have driven down coal use across North America in recent years.

The plant, which opened in 1974, has also been under growing pressure to reduce its emissions.

But the president of the Navajo Nation—whose reservation is home to both the plant and the coal mine that serves it—says his tribe opposes the plant’s closure and the loss of 800 jobs that depend on it.