Although President Trump has been promoting a pro-coal energy agenda, there are four things killing coal that the administration may not be able to remedy.

That was the message Bill Ritter Jr. delivered to American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Power and Energy Conference & Exhibition attendees during his keynote address on June 27. Ritter is the former governor of Colorado, founder of the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, and author of Powering Forward: What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.

“In the United States of America, our power system—our power portfolio—is changing in a fairly dynamic way,” Ritter said. “I would argue, in spite of our November election . . . that transition is still happening.”

The four things Ritter said are likely beyond Trump’s control: state-level actions, municipal-level responses to climate change, corporate power-purchasing activities, and bipartisan cooperation outside of Washington, D.C.

1. State-Level Actions

Although Ritter noted that Congress has not passed a single piece of comprehensive energy legislation in the past 10 years, he said about 4,000 pieces of energy legislation get introduced annually on the state level, of which as many as 600 have gone on to become law each year.…

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