"Lost in all the attention to the Trump's effort to scuttle Obama’s clean power plan is THE GOP PLOT to prop up the struggling coal industry by doing something very un-Republican — subsidizing it. In essence, consumers would pay these plants a premium for electricity that competitors could produce, & are already producing, more cheaply. A good-faith proposal would start by offering a detailed definition of “resilience” that reflects the modern electricity system. It would explore the broad range of options our highly integrated and networked regional grids make available to strengthen the system’s performance — including natural gas, wind and solar power, strategies to reduce demand, and technology-based approaches that make grids operate more flexibly. There is no reason, however, to keep the nation’s old and dirty coal plants on line just because the Trump administration likes them."
At www.nytimes.com
