The White House is announcing another waste of taxpayer dollars today, spending $700M to try to revive a dead energy source, saddling Americans with more pollution and infrastructure that is destined to go unused in short order.
Here’s the thing: coal is dead, and everyone knows it.
In the early 2000s, coal accounted for about half of US electricity generation. In 2024, it accounted for 15%. Both use and capacity have been dropping for a long time.
This change didn’t happen because coal was outlawed, it happened because it’s a terrible energy source. It’s deadly, it’s unreliable, and it’s costly (and rapidly getting more costly).
It’s not just the absolute worst energy source all things considered, it’s the worst energy source by most individual metrics, too.
