With the immodesty of an experienced braggart, the city of Los Angeles announced on Dec. 4 that it has ended its relationship with coal. No longer will it receive power generated from that particular fossil fuel.
Mayor Karen Bass called it “a defining moment” that will take the city closer “building a clean energy economy that benefits every Angeleno.” The announcement was hardly more than a photo-op that will do little to improve LA air quality.
By “clean,” she means electricity generated by sources that don’t directly emit carbon dioxide: solar and wind are the favorites of the “clean energy” crowd. But carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, an entirely natural process, are not the bogeyman as the narrative characterizes them. Of all the substances released by the burning of coal, non-toxic carbon dioxide is the one that does least amount of harm, if it does any at all.
While a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide is a weak one, not nearly as strong as methane, and far weaker than water vapor – primarily clouds – which NASA reckons is “responsible for about half of Earth’s greenhouse effect.” Referring to carbon dioxide “as ‘carbon pollution’ is just plain scientifically inaccurate,” says a Cato Institute report published several years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that found, under the Clean Air Act, greenhouse gases are air pollutants.
In addition to feeding plants and contributing to the greening of our planet, carbon dioxide plays an important role in regulating our climate. Without it, “Earth’s natural greenhouse effect would be too weak to keep the average global surface temperature above freezing,” says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The real pollutants from coal are sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and other heavy metals, ash and particulates. So why aren’t these emissions mentioned when coal is cast as an environmental villain?
Because the political war is focused on carbon dioxide, an easy target that all humans have a part in emitting. By singling out carbon dioxide, policymakers create an almost endless source of funds from which they are able to extract money to pay for its “social cost.” With maybe a few exceptions in the undeveloped world, we all have a “carbon footprint” that can be taxed.
Bass could have argued that Los Angeles’ air quality will improve from a reduction in the pollutants mentioned above. But she didn’t, and she couldn’t. The coal plant that will no longer provide electricity to Los Angeles is nearly 600 miles from the city. The Intermountain Power Project is in the Great Basin region of western Utah, far from Los Angeles, though anyone who heard the news is supposed to infer the opposite – that it’s a nearby nuisance.
The plant is idled for now, but it hasn’t been disconnected or decommissioned and could be restarted later to supply power elsewhere – maybe to one of those artificial intelligence centers that have an almost insatiable appetite for energy, which is growing 15% per year, “more than four times faster than the growth of total electricity consumption from all other sectors,” says the International Energy Agency.
Also omitted from the celebration are impactful events taking place elsewhere, outside the California climate alarm bubble. While Los Angeles boasts of its coal divestiture, China and India are ramping “up [their] thermal coal imports as winter demand looms,” Oilprice.com reports.
Both countries have been feverishly building coal-fired power plants for some time and don’t appear to have plans to let up. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air reports that almost 95 gigawatts of new coal power projects were begun in 2024 in China while 3.3 gigawatts of suspended projects were restarted, “the highest level since 2015.”
This indicates that “a substantial number of new plants will come online” over the next two to three years, “further solidifying coal’s role in the power system.”
Then just last week, we learned from Bloomberg that “India is considering an unprecedented increase in coal power capacity, potentially building new plants until at least 2047.”
Turning off a coal plant that served customers in a city of 3.9 million means nothing while two developing nations whose combined populations are more than 2.8 billion turn up the coal fires to meet their growing demand. But, sure, call it a “defining moment.”
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
