Forbes: The Changing U.S. Political Climate May Make Room for Much Cleaner Coal Plants

When Donald Trump is sworn in next January as the nation’s 45th President, it will mark a new era — one that will at least partially scrap the Obama administration’s environmental agenda and one that may make room for modern and advanced coal plants. While it may be a sensible idea, questions still loom as to whether it would be a cost-effective one.

Coal’s rise to power during the last century made perfect sense given its abundance and low cost — and the ease in which it has been easily integrated on to the transmission grid. Coal use, in the meantime, will remain a staple of both domestic and global economies. New investments into the coal fuel technology are important, not to prop up the coal industry but to help cut down on the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide.

"We now anticipate that we will have an audience who is more inclined to have this conversation," says Jeffrey Keffer, chief executive of Longview Power, which has owned and operated for four years an "advanced super-critical" coal plant in Morgantown, W.Va. "Our plant is so far beyond the older the coal technologies."