"Remember all of Donald Trump’s promises to put coal miners back to work? Turns out, his repeated attacks on the environment to try and bail out dirty fuels were all for naught. More coal-fired power was taken off the grid under Trump’s presidency than under former President Barack Obama’s second term, a new analysis from Global Energy Monitor shows.

Trump’s only been out of office for a couple months, but it’s kind of wild to remember just how hard Trump worked to do favors for the coal industry. In addition to rolling back more than 100 environmental regulations over the course of his term, let’s not forget how cozy he was with coal executives—and how his Department of Energy tried to check off items from a literal “wish list” of suggestions to save the industry from coal baron Bob Murray.

But the new report, which is the 2020 version of an annual release from Global Energy Monitor, a non-governmental organization that keeps track of fossil fuels, has the cold, hard truth: A coal-friendly Washington was no match for the market forces that were dragging down coal, plus a pandemic in Trump’s last year that hit the industry hard."

Molly Taft reports for Earther April 5, 2021. [2]