When the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump called Friday for an emergency power auction in an ambitious bid to speed the construction of big power plants and tame skyrocketing power bills, top officials made clear the vision encompassed specific kinds of energy: coal, gas and nuclear.
“We’ve got to build baseload power plants to keep the lights on, to keep our homes warm and to power our economy,” U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at an event steps from the White House on Friday. Baseload generation means coal, natural gas and nuclear, according to an administration fact sheet on the plan. It notably excludes renewable energy.
But building the kind of power plants that the Trump administration prefers has become extremely difficult. Nobody has constructed a U.S. coal plant in over a decade. And no developers have released plans for large-scale nuclear projects after the last new reactor came in billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
