Trump on China, India and Coal

President Donald Trump wrongly claimed that the Paris Agreement would allow China to “build hundreds of additional coal plants” and allow India to “double its coal production by 2020” but the United States “can’t build the plants.”

Strictly speaking, there’s nothing in the agreement stipulating which countries can and can’t build coal plants. While the United States is held to a higher standard than developing countries, the two he mentioned — China and India — have agreed to climate measures that would preclude a major expansion of coal. And perhaps most important, new coal plants in the U.S. aren’t economically feasible right now, due to lower costs of other forms of energy.

“You can’t build them cheaply, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University’s College of Law, says of new coal plants. Natural gas plants are cheaper to build, more efficient and cleaner. “It’s economics, it’s market forces.” Van Nostrand told us.