Barely 24 hours after the election was called for Donald Trump, the chief financial officer of Duke Energy said that Trump’s energy plans would make the utility company consider burning more coal.
That is a recipe for death. It is essentially saying they are willing to kill people. It is not a question of whether more people will die if energy companies continue — or even worse, increase — their burning of coal, it is a question of how many.
Since 2010, my organization has helped retire more than 380 coal-fired power plants. That has saved tens of thousands of lives — in part by preventing tens of thousands of heart attacks and hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks.
It is not just health that will be under attack — it is our wallets too. Americans are already suffering from higher costs. But Trump’s victory is now giving companies like Duke the green light to force you to pay more just to keep the lights on. Increasing coal use would drive up energy costs for consumers and deprive Americans of the good jobs that come with investments in clean, renewable energy sources.
We simply cannot afford yet another price hike. We cannot afford another threat to our health and well-being. Yet, big polluters are so emboldened by the fossil fuel-friendly Project 2025 agenda that they are already threatening working Americans with more deadly pollution and higher prices.
Duke Energy had previously committed to eliminating coal completely from its energy portfolio by 2035, until last month when it pushed that deadline back three years. But even Duke, one of the country’s worst polluting companies, saw the writing on the wall from market forces.
Renewable energy sources are more resilient and less expensive than fossil fuels. Their cost has dropped quickly.
Between 2010 and 2020, the cost of producing electricity from solar power decreased by 85 percent and the cost of wind energy fell by 56 percent for onshore wind production and 48 percent for offshore.
That trend is continuing. Texas, a state rich in oil and gas with a deregulated energy market and no real commitment to decarbonize its power grids, ranks number one among states in clean energy production.
But fossil fuel and utility executives are willing to continue to generate electricity from more expensive fossil fuels like coal if they can pass the extra costs on to consumers and pocket the profits.
We cannot take a step backward from the clean energy transition already underway. There is simply too much at stake for families and communities. That goes for health and consumer costs, but also jobs.
More than 330,000 clean energy jobs have been created through the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act alone. And that is on top of hundreds of thousands of more created over the past several years. Even oil- and gas-rich Texas now has more people employed in renewable energy jobs than in oil and gas! We cannot afford to stop now.
According to the United Nations, “Every dollar of investment in renewables creates three times more jobs than in the fossil fuel industry.”
Clean energy jobs and infrastructure are directly and indirectly responsible for the rebirth of the American manufacturing sector.
Because of the Inflation Reduction Act and other policies from the outgoing administration that encourage bringing supply chains to U.S. shores, the creation of clean energy jobs can indirectly create many more jobs in materials manufacturing, as well as in areas like construction. We must continue to invest and grow so more families can benefit from these well-paying jobs.
So, what will the return of Trump mean for the transition away from fossil fuels? Well, it means environmentalists and other climate- and health-conscious Americans are going to need to fight harder.
But it also does not need to be a cause for despair. We have been here before with the first Trump administration. And we retired more coal in Trump’s first four years than we did in the prior four years under President Obama.
And to all those Americans, I will also say there is an entire movement of green organizations that had some success in countering the Trump administration the first time and is ready to fight back again.
My organization and others filed hundreds of successful lawsuits to stop the first Trump administration from gutting bedrock environmental protections and exposed the revolving door between his administration’s appointees and polluting industries.
The work to save our planet — and, with it, America’s working families — will go on. And the transition to the clean energy economy will continue.
Ben Jealous is the executive director of the Sierra Club and a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
