During the campaign, Donald Trump made a restoration of coal a central feature of his energy policy. Trump’s position—placing the blame for coal’s declining role in the national electric grid on policies put in place by President Obama—is a common presentation from both other Republicans and from mining companies. In fact, it's the Blame Obama factor of coal’s fall that brought Trump into the discussion.

By using the idea that President Obama had regulated coal out of the marketplace, and that Hillary Clinton was going to accelerate those changes, Trump turned coal, and coal miners, into a theme of his campaign. Hard-hatted miners from Ohio and Pennsylvania became the iconic representation of Trump’s Rust Belt strategy. Much more than auto or steel workers, it was miners in their coveralls and sticker-laden helmets who became the very white face of Trump’s “forgotten American” claims—and the objects of his frequent promise to “bring back coal."

This close association between Trump and coal has remained notable enough that the opening of a new mine in Pennsylvania was treated as a major coup for the new administration, even though the new mine employed fewer than a hundred people. Trump also made a point of releasing a set of misleading statistics, using growth in the overall job category that includes coal mining to suggest that there had been a huge increase in mining jobs, when in fact the number had barely changed. Both Trump and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt claimed 50,000 new coal jobs in just the first six months Trump was in office—a number wildly at odds with the truth.

if Trump had stopped with bragging about the Pennsylvania jobs and the pretense of overall mining gains, the “Trump digs coal” narrative might have been moderately benign, other than its contribution to the perception that environmental regulations come at the price of middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, Trump’s team is moving beyond mining rhetoric into changes that are intended to reward the mine owners who provided all those miners-as-props during the campaign season, as well as create a ‘success story’ in coal that Trump and other Republicans can use in future contests. Trump wants a win in coal, no matter the cost.

And the cost is very, very high. It’s a cost that can be measured not just in the effects on climate change, which is already costing the nation billions, but also millions of premature deaths due to pollution. Even on the purely economic front, Trump’s distortion of the energy market is pinning communities and states to a dying extraction industry that will develop no beneficial skill sets or infrastructure, but leave behind expensive, toxic clean-up sites.

1980—2000: Coal vs Coal

The number of people employed by coal mining in the United States actually peaked at 883,000 in 1923. From that point, the story of mining has been the story of many industries in the United States as increasing efficiency meant greater profits for companies at the price of jobs for employees. Two decades later, the number of miners had been cut in half due to increasing mechanization of underground mines and widespread use of cheap ammonium nitrate explosives in surface mines.

By 1980, most underground mines in the United States had switched to the more efficient, mechanized “continuous miner” system and the bulk of production came from surface mines located principally in the Illinois Basin, a region of bituminous coal that stretches across Western Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana. At that point, 60 years of decline had brought the number of people employed by coal mines to under 200,000. That trend was about to accelerate.

By 1990, that number was down to 130,000. By 1995, it was 92,000. By 2000, there were only 71,000 engaged in mining coal—a decline of two-thirds in only 20 years. What killed coal over that period wasn’t the entry of some other fuel source. What killed most coal communities was … coal.

The decades of the 1980s and 1990s saw a the largest coal companies, in particular Peabody and Arch, move much of their production from the Midwest to the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Rather than mining the five to six foot seams of the Illinois Basin, companies were now mining coal that was 70, 80, even 100 feet thick. In doing so, they created a new kind of surface mine that was fearsomely efficient and operations whose scales dwarfed anything that had come before. Two mines—Peabody's North Antelope–Rochelle and Arch’s Black Thunder—reached production of 100 million tons a year. Each. Just one of these mines can out-produce the entire state of Pennsylvania. Together, the mines can top West Virginia and Kentucky combined.

The era of these Powder River Supermines corresponds with another big change in mining: The crushing of the union. When the first large mine in the area opened in 1972, the workers voted in UMWA representation. But the companies were determined to make the Powder River mines a laboratory for new policies where they could be free from union work and safety rules. In a series of confrontations at Belle Ayr Mine, workers—most of whom had moved to the area from the Midwest and had no other options—eventually agreed to reject the union. From 1975 on, operators in the area were free to set their own rules. The 10 largest mines in the country are all in the Powder River Basin and they are all non-union.

As production increased in the Powder River Basin, companies were able to use the high production there to systematically suspend operations at mines in other regions, reopening only when workers agreed to drop union representation. While the number of people employed in coal was declining, the percentage represented by the union was dropping even faster. As miners saw the union beaten back over and over by aggressive tactics, they lost confidence in the ability of the union to lobby for their protection or benefits.

The combination of increasing automation, the rise of the Powder River Basin, and work rules that simply drove miners harder meant that even though the period from 1980 to 2000 saw two thirds of miners lose their jobs, the amount of coal produced in the United States increased from 800 million tons a year to over 1,100 million.

Coal was doing great … just not coal miners.

2000—2010: Coal vs Natural Gas

While the idea that President Obama waged a “War on Coal” makes neat copy for Republican media, it papers over a small problem—coal’s fall began before Obama even took office.

While automation and the move west were reshaping the coal industry, an even bigger revolution was playing out for natural gas. Since the 1970s, gas had followed a familiar pattern: New fields were constantly discovered, but those fields were not quite as productive as the depleted fields they were replacing.

At times, there was relative abundance and the price of gas would dip. At other times a tight market drove up the price.

Using gas rather than coal to produce electricity has several advantages. Gas-fired power plants are easier to site. They're easier to scale. They're cheaper to operate and much cheaper to maintain. And they are much, much less costly to build.

Still, despite all those advantages, the “spiky” up and down nature of the gas market made utilities reluctant to think of natural gas as their primary source of fuel. They generally restricted themselves to using gas for smaller “peaking plants” that could backfill primary power sources such as nuclear, hydroelectric, and, of course, coal.

But … things changed enormously just as coal companies were leaning back to enjoy a period of unprecedented profits.

Hydraulic fracturing to improve production of oil and gas goes back to 1947, but in the late 1990s, several techniques previously used on a small scale were put together in a way that demonstrated an inexpensive way to greatly increase production from large, already well-known and defined gas fields, including some that companies considered played out.

By 2009, the United States was the biggest producer of natural gas in the world. The new influx of gas found a ready market and the fracking industry boomed. Drill crews, geologists, and service companies ran round the clock as fracking expanded out of Texas to North Dakota to Pennsylvania to … everywhere. That same year, gas production so definitively passed demand that the price collapsed from $12.00 per million BTU to less than $5.00. It has never gone back.

Consistent availability and low prices finally gave utilities what they wanted. On a pure fuel to fuel basis, coal and gas were competitive after 2009—and gas still had every other advantage.

2010—2015: Coal vs. Everyone

Coal died in the energy marketplace, killed by utilities who could not wait to be relieved of the massive investment needed to launch a new coal plant. But it wasn't gas alone that pulled the trigger.

One of the competitors was an energy source in use even longer than coal: Wind. In 1980, the average commercial electric wind turbine was about 70 feet tall, with blades 50 feet long. The power produced by that turbine cost around $240 per megawatt hour. By 2000, the average new commercial windmill was over 200 feet tall, the size of a 20-story building. Which sounds enormous for something rising up from an open field—but that size was still increasing. New towers average over 300 feet tall, and those used in offshore wind can be a staggering 600 feet tall.

With that increasing size, and the increasing number of units, came increasing power capacity and reduced cost per kilowatt. Texas’ massive Horse Hollow Center, where 420 turbines are arrayed over more than 70 square miles, produces 735 megawatts. There are now over 11,500 commercial wind turbines in Texas alone. They supply about a quarter of electricity in the state, and on windy days have actually produced so much power that the cost of electricity went negative.

Texas is leading the nation in wind, but it’s not alone. At the start of 2017, there were over 52,500 commercial wind turbines across the United States, grouped into over 1,000 utility scale projects and capable of over 82,000 megawatts. More than half of these turbines went into operation since 2010.

As wind was going down in price and up in volume, so was another renewable energy source. The cost of photo-voltaic solar panels dropped from $40 a watt in 1980 to less than $7 by 2010. The drop turned both home and commercial operations from expensive statements into sound commercial options. That was just the start. PVinsights put the price of a large solar module at $0.75 per watt in 2013. In 2017, that cost is averaging about $0.25 per watt. In addition to photo-voltaic, there are a number of solar-thermal solutions whose scale and cost has also been marching ever downward.

The result for solar has been a growth rate that makes even wind seem slow. In 2010, the United States produced just over 4,000 megawatts of power through solar. In 2016, that number passed 50,000 megawatts.

The period from 2010 to 2016 was marked by two big trends:

Continuing availability of natural gas at low prices drove utility companies to either convert existing coal plants to gas, or close coal plants and replace them with more scalable combined cycle gas systems.

New capacity, which in the past would have been either gas or goal, was increasingly in the form of wind and solar.

Put it all together, and this is how the US electrical market changed in just over a decade.

Between 2004 and 2010, falling gas prices began to eat into coal’s dominance, but the real effect of cheap gas wasn’t seen until years later as gas-fired plants were completed and coal-fired plants went off line. It’s also not until after 2010 when falling prices and ready availability cranked up the role of wind and solar. What looks like an almost overnight change was many years in creation.

In the next decade, all these trends are expected to continue and even accelerate. A large number of remaining coal plants are 40-50 years old or older. They’re in need of major repairs and remediation. Considering market trends, nearly all these plants will be either converted to gas or simply closed. Both wind and solar continue to get cheaper and more readily available. Commercial solar, community solar, and distributed solar are all expanding rapidly. Wind turbines are likely to level off in size but greatly expand in numbers, including more offshore projects.

No new coal plants are in the works. No new coal plants on are the drawing boards. It’s unlikely that any large new coal plant will be built in the United States. Ever.

Kemper—the shiny “clean coal” plant that was supposed to lead the way to a new generation of plants—has turned out to be an expensive boondoggle, billions of dollars over projected cost and with key technologies still not working. In fact, it’s been such a disaster that when it finally goes into production, it won’t burn coal at all. It’s being converted to gas before the switch is even thrown.

Donald Trump’s coal problem

This leaves Donald Trump with something of an issue. The coal miners that were the symbol of his campaign in 2016 represent a small work force that’s getting smaller. Trump can’t just end the “war on coal” and see the results he promised, because there never was a war on coal in the United States.

Coal died in the marketplace, done in by the trio of natural gas, wind, and solar. There are enough middle-aged coal plants, multi-billion dollar investments all, which will remain in business long enough to see coal slowly eased out of the market rather than simply falling off a cliff. But there’s little Trump can do to actually improve the situation for coal.

Unless, that is, he purposely warps the market through extreme regulatory pressure. So, naturally, that’s what he’s doing.

Step one for Trump’s coal plan started only 10 days after he took office. That was when he signed an executive order that removed regulations on dumping coal waste into streams and rivers. This change allows coal companies in Appalachia to use the most destructive form of mining—mountaintop removal and contour strip. These techniques tear down 300-million-year-old mountains and fill thousands of miles of flowing streams with toxic debris … but they’re marginally cheaper than other mining techniques.

They’re cheaper primarily because they employ fewer people for a shorter time than either underground mining or conventional surface mining. But that’s exactly what coal mine owners love about mountaintop removal. It’s a hit-and-run technique. A tear-it-up-and-don’t-look-back technique.

It’s not a way to produce more coal. It’s a way to produce cheaper coal. Which is all that matters at the moment.

Coal is not a consumer product. You can’t sell more of it just because you produce more. It has to be burned in a coal-fired power plant. And in a market where the amount of coal that can be sold is strictly limited by a declining number of coal-burning plants, more coal doesn’t help anyone, but cheaper coal can still mean more profit.

Right now, mine operators are focused on producing coal more cheaply. What Trump is doing with his executive orders is helping them make the most on every ton they sell.

Giving the coal industry a price cut is helpful, especially when three of the four largest coal companies have all made the journey through Chapter 11 since 2015 (where they all scrubbed off plenty of requirements for supporting sick, old coal miners and wormed out of obligations to reclaim old mining areas). The cash-strapped industry needed some immediate payoff from their investment in Trump.

But just shaving a few pennies per tons doesn’t help if the number of tons continues to drop the way it has since 2010. If Trump really wants to be a “Friend of Coal,” as all his signs said, he needs to halt the slide in coal plants. For that there are two steps.

First, Scott Pruitt is acting to remove the Clean Power Plan. The plan, almost none of which had gone into force, was helping to spur utilities along the path of removing coal plants, especially the oldest, most heavily-polluting plants. By scotching the CPP, Pruitt removes that pressure.

And he gets to do so while delivering a dose of the sick irony that seems characteristic of policies under Trump.

"When you think about what that rule meant, it was about picking winners and losers," Pruitt said at the announcement. "Regulatory power should not be used by any regulatory body to pick winners and losers."

Fifty-year-old coal plants will likely hang around another decade, resulting in about 150,000 asthma attacks each year, and 5,000 deaths, in addition to producing more CO 2 , more mercury, more sulfur, and more toxic coal slurry. Without the CPP, the federal government will make no effort to enforce any regulation of greenhouse gases. This cut has the added benefit—as far as Trump and Pruitt are concerned—of reducing payments that would have gone out to the states to encourage renewables. So killing the Clean Power Plan has the dual effect of encouraging utilities to hang onto coal plants, and slowing the expansion of renewable energy. All it costs is a few thousand American lives and America’s standing as a reasonable nation.

But it’s still not enough. Just removing the Clean Power Plan may help put the brakes on a few plant closures, but it won’t slow the fall of coal significantly. As simple and old-fashioned as a coal power plant may seem, it’s actually extremely costly and difficult to maintain. Coal is not a mineral. It’s a rock—no two pieces alike. It’s made up of durain, fusain, vitrinoids … compressed bits of stems, and leaves, and twigs, from forests that are 70 million or 330 million years old. There’s also plenty of moisture, and ash, and salts, and metals. That stuff not only goes up the smokestacks to get into American lungs, it fouls boilers and clogs pipes. It means that coal plants require regular maintenance—as well as a place to dump tons of cinders and ash. Plus there’s the coal itself, which has to be kept on site in enormous piles that are subject to losing some of their potency to weather, and sometimes to doing fun things like spontaneously combusting.

Gas comes to the plant down a pipe, as needed and ready to burn. The wind may be slow or fast, but it doesn’t come with occasional pebbles of iron pyrite. The day may be cloudy, but there’s a good bet the sunshine is not laced with uranium salts. None of those other sources is likely to be delayed by a railroad subject to closure, accidents, and arbitrary cost increases. The externalities of coal are, in a word, godawful. Given a chance, every utility in the nation would close every coal plant and dance a jig when it was done. Pruitt can announce the end of the CPP twice every day, and coal plants are still going to close.

So Trump is prepared to give them a reason to stick around.

It comes in the form of “reliability” requirements. Rick Perry, complete with his smart glasses, has been pushing out a report on energy markets and grid reliability over at the Department of Energy. According to Perry, the move to renewable energy has been “premature.” In this instance, Republicans are ready to slap away the invisible hand, disregarding the choices of the market because those choices don’t match the source of revenues coming into their campaign coffers.

As part of this plan, the DOE intends to put in requirements that will both reward utilities that keep coal in business, and punish those who attempt to drop coal. It does so not by saying outright “you have to use coal,” but by defining a reliable energy source as one that has a 90-day supply of fuel on site. Solar doesn’t work—it’s specifically excluded. Wind doesn’t work—it’s specifically excluded. Not even natural gas works, as most gas plants get their fuel delivered by pipeline on a near realtime basis. Under the draft definition of the report, only coal and nuclear are considered “reliable.” How much utilities will be rewarded for keeping old coal plants around, or punished for dropping them, isn’t clear.

Put it all together and it’s a three step plan

Trump issues executive orders to lower the cost of mining coal. EPA kills the Clean Power Plan to remove any obstacles to burning coal. DOE enforces reliability rules that require utilities to operate coal plants.

It’s simple enough. Evil, but simple.

However, there is some good news—even with all the parts in place, it still may not be enough.

The initial draft of the DOE’s grid reliability report came out back in August. In September, the DOE issued a letter of proposed rule making around this coal-centric vision of reliability. But still ... here’s Texas-based Vistra Energy announcing the closure of an 1,800-megawatt plant on Oct. 6.

Then on Oct. 10, Pruitt announced the end of the Clean Power Plan. Which was followed, on Oct. 13, by Vistra announcing the closure of two more coal-powered plants totaling 2,300 megawatts. Vistra is far from alone. Another eight coal-powered plants have announced closures this year alone—9,500 megawatts of coal on their way out, not including plants that are being converted to gas.

Trump has provided a carrot in the form of eliminating environmental regulations, and a stick in the form of grid reliability rules—but either way, he’s just beating a dead industry.