Good news for climate from US energy production despite Trump

When President Trump came to power, he vowed to make coal-based energy production stronger than previously. In general, he has supported the use of fossil fuels in energy production and withdrew USA from the Paris Climate Accord. Despite this, very good news are coming from the energy production sector in USA for the last months.

As a background for this the following must be stated. The federal government does not give any subsidies for energy production using renewable sources. Thus, energy companies buy needed energy from producers, who can deliver power most economically.

With this in mind, it is significant that in 2020 energy obtained using renewable sources (windmills, solar power, hydroelectric power) has exceeded coal-based energy production for 90 days already, as reported in a New York Times article today. This is all the more remarkable, as in 2019 the renewable energy production exceeded energy production using coal only in 38 days.

From this one can conclude that the coal era is rapidly coming to end, as energy is more expensive to produce using coal than using renewable resources.