Implications of Trump's Climate Policy Action

Donald Trump justified his decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement by arguing that compliance would impose a crippling economic burden on the United States. Trump reaffirmed his intention to make fossil fuels the centerpiece of the country's energy policy.

The speeches against the president were fierce, but mostly focused on his lack of concern for the disastrous consequences of climate change. Much less attention has been directed to his belief that coal will be cheaper than renewables for the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, only history can answer this question. However, recent research shows that some of the technologies introduced over the past decade show a very predictable rate of advancement, become more efficient and therefore cheaper. And solar power is one of those technologies.

And in the future, solar energy will almost certainly dominate, not because it is green, but because it is cheap. Indeed, the evidence suggests there is a fifty-fifty chance that solar energy will become competitive with coal as early as 2024. There is a good chance this could happen even earlier in some countries.

In the near future, the coal industry is likely to need subsidies to compete with solar energy. Trump can "love coal" if he wants to, but he cannot stop the process by which solar power can become the cheapest source of energy.