MORGANTOWN – James Van Nostrand is convinced President Trump’s decision to pull the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change won’t have much impact in coal heavy states like West Virginia or across the industry as a whole.
“The coal jobs aren’t coming back,” Van Nostrand, a West Virginia University law professor and director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, told The West Virginia Record. “I don’t think it will improve the economy in West Virginia at all.
“No industry is taking on more coal ventures. The reality is coal is out of the money and can’t compete with the likes of natural gas and renewable energy. Right now, no investor would loan money for a new plant.”
James Van Nostrand, a WVU College of Law professor and director of its Center for Energy and Sustainable Development
| Photo courtesy of WVU
Even as supporters of the president’s actions tout the rebirth of an industry, all the numbers point to a survival that seems quite questionable.
Published in November 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s annual coal report found that coal production in 2015 dropped 10.3 percent to its lowest level since 1986 in 2015.
Around that same time, the average number of employees at U.S. mines decreased 12 percent, or to the levels since the agency start tracking such figures nearly four decades ago.
Van Nostrand laments it’s been even tougher in states such as West Virginia.
"I think the transition has been devastating and had a disproportionate impact on coal producing states like West Virginia,” he said. “We and other states like Kentucky and Wyoming are getting hampered. We need to provide large scale financial assistance for these critical transition periods.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump made the promise of bringing back coal a staple of his platform, propelling him to wins in nine of the 10 states with the most coal production.
Yet, Van Nostrand largely sees what he’s now doing as a disservice to all those who make their living in the industry.
"It was a con when he made that promise," he said. “It seems more about trying to undo everything the Obama administration did. Even his advisers know coal’s not coming back.”
Still early in his administration, Trump has already signed an executive order on energy independence ordering that federal agencies review the Clean Power Plan agreed to by Obama that paved the way for the Paris Agreement.
The plan calls for carbon emissions reductions of 32 percent by 2030 and greenhouse gas emissions of as much as 28 percent over the next eight years.
“We need to recognize that global market forces are changing,” Van Nostrand added. “And blaming the Obama EPA won’t change that.”