Orange County NC Website
It's not only cities. About 30 states have established standards that require utilities and power companies to sharply increase <br />their reliance on renewable energy over the next decade or more. <br />Falling prices for wind and solar and low prices for natural gas have further undercut coal's share of the electricity market. <br />According to the Sierra Club, 175 coal plants in the United States have shut down since 2010, and 73 others are scheduled to <br />retire by 2030. <br />The Energy Information Administration is more sanguine about coal's prognosis, but it still says that coal will be eased out of <br />the electricity mix even without the Clean Power Plan. In a 2015 report, the EIA said that go,00o megawatts of coal -fired <br />capacity would be retired by 2040 with the plan in place. Without the plan, coal capacity would still fall by 40,000 megawatts. <br />"We're not building any new coal plants in this country, and the existing ones are having a harder and harder time competing <br />with ever - cheaper renewables," said Mary Anne Hitt, the head of the Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal" campaign. "There's a ... <br />structural disadvantage for coal in the marketplace. That's not something Donald Trump can wave away with the stroke of a <br />pen." <br />State -level programs to boost renewable sources of electricity have support, in some cases, across party lines. In the weeks <br />after Trump's election, Republican governors in three Midwestern states — Illinois, Ohio and Michigan — committed to adding <br />more renewable power and boosting energy efficiency. <br />"If President Trump doesn't recognize it, we've seen that Republican governors do see an investment opportunity with <br />efficiency and renewable energy," said Dick Munson, who works on clean energy programs in the Midwest for the <br />Environmental Defense Fund. <br />In Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signed the Future Energy Jobs Bill, which was negotiated with the state's Democratic - <br />controlled legislature. The measure would channel more than $200 million a year into renewable energy investment. It also <br />sets tougher standards for utilities, requiring them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 56 percent by 2030. The Clean Power <br />Plan would have required a comparatively modest cut of 34 percent. <br />In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) vetoed a bill that would have weakened that state's renewable standards. Major corporations <br />such as Amazon and Whirlpool, as well as wind and solar developers, had urged him to stick to ambitious renewable goals. <br />(Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) <br />"I believe it's real," Kasich said of climate change in a speech last fall at the University of Texas at Austin. "You can't read these <br />stories about these things happening all over the world, on our coasts and the rising sea levels, without being concerned about <br />it." <br />Out west, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has made clear that he will eagerly push forward with his state's efforts to combat <br />climate change and shift to cleaner energy sources. <br />