Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have done wonders for the coal and energy industries. Not for the overwhelming majority of people that work on the ground in those businesses, of course, but for the handful of rich guys that own and make money off of those businesses. The Houston Chronicle reports that a coal-fired power plant near the northern Texas city of Vernon will be shutting its doors in the next two years.
The nearly 700 megawatt Oklaunion plant near Vernon couldn't compete in the market run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT said AEP Texas spokesman Greg Blair.
"The owners voted to close the plant between April and Oct. of 2020. There's a lot more approvals that need to be gotten before that happens, but really the plant was no longer competitive in the ERCOT market," Blair said.
After three Luminant plants shut down earlier this year, the head of Texas Mining and Reclamation Association told Houston Public Media things weren’t going well.
“You know, the bottom line is, it doesn’t bode well for the industry,” he said.
Blevins said he expects to see coal production in Texas drop by millions of tons in the coming years, in part because of economics that don’t justify companies going after resources that are still technically recoverable. Blevins said when he talks to coal workers in small Texas towns, he tells them to diversify their skillsets in case their local mine or power plant closes.
San Antonio’s CPS Energy-run plant also announced plans to shut, according to the Chronicle. The important thing here is that the richest one percent got their tax breaks, while Trump and the Republican administration did zilch to build out our country’s infrastructure and create jobs for the people affected by our changing energy landscape.
No comments: