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More than 200 coal-fired power plants, the number one source of carbon pollution in the United States, have closed over the last decade, including almost 30 plants during President Trump’s first full year in office.

While the president blames his predecessor’s clean air policies, the real culprit is George Mitchell, the Texan wildcatter who first married the principles of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Mitchell’s offspring, the shale revolution, has cut natural gas prices by two-thirds, which has allowed natural gas to unseat the century-long reign of king coal in the U.S. power industry.

A carbon tax on American thermal coal shipments through Canada would further hit an already imploding coal industry and has the potential to embarrass Trump with a failed promise to his supporters.

Once the source of more than 50 per cent of distributed power in the United States, last year coal’s share fell to a record low of 30 per cent, marking the first time coal took a back seat to natural gas in power generation. Facing a secular decline in domestic demand too, the U.S. thermal coal industry’s only hope is to find export markets to compensate. The answer? Asia.

Coal demand remains strong in Asia and prices have risen rapidly. But like the oil sands’ landlocked bitumen, America’s largest thermal coal reserve, the massive Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, are 1,300 kilometres away from tidewater.

With no coastal export terminals in Washington or Oregon to ship from, and the last eight proposed terminals projects having been withdrawn due to fierce local opposition, the U.S. must look outside its borders. Fortunately for Cloud Peak Energy and other Powder River basin producers, Vancouver’s Westshore Terminals welcomes their thermal coal with open arms.