After Energy Secretary Rick Perry spent more than a year pushing efforts to invoke national security in order to force power companies to keep their economically struggling coal plants running, the White House has shelved the plan, Politico reported on Tuesday.
The shelving of the coal bailout program came amid opposition from the president’s own advisers on the National Security Council and National Economic Council, who objected to the ideas included in the plan, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.
The move has angered the coal mining companies that backed Trump’s presidential campaign and lobbied heavily for such a bailout, even though the president made other moves to support the coal industry, such as has stripping away President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations and pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.
“The problem they’ve got is every option they might consider raises the costs for somebody at a time when nobody has an appetite for increased costs anywhere,” Bob Coward, co-leader of energy advisory firm MPR Associates, told Politico.
The rescue plan was a major part of the Trump administration’s energy policy and the president’s promise to save the coal industry, according to The Hill.
Trump regularly played up the bailout plan in speeches, but in recent months the president has omitted mentions of it even in his pro-coal addresses, Politico reported.
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