CLIMATE CHANGE/ENERGY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE/RICK PERRY: “On his first official visit to this coal-seam state that voted overwhelmingly for Donald J. Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry praised the work of the scientists at a federal laboratory devoted to figuring out how to burn more coal with less pollution.
‘You and your predecessors have really worked to change the world,’ he told workers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, one of 17 research facilities run by the Department of Energy. ‘What you do here matters.’
But in the Trump administration’s ideal economy, where the energy sector would be freed from regulatory mandates, international climate change obligations and environmental rules, what scientists at the West Virginia lab do would not matter very much. And that might explain why, despite his effusive praise, Mr. Perry has proposed to cut by 54 percent the budget of the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on researching technologies to use coal, oil and natural gas more cleanly and safely.
That cut would include the lab in West Virginia and four others around the country that have developed smokestack ‘scrubbers’ to reduce toxic mercury pollution from burning coal; designed deep-sea drilling hardware to prevent disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion in 2010; and researched technology that could allow the burning of coal without the emissions of the planet-warming carbon dioxide.
Grace Bochenek, the director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, was blunt about her interests as she led Mr. Perry’s tour: ‘Today was about educating, giving him perspective, so he can make a better decision.’ “
-Coral Davenport, “Perry Praises ‘Clean Coal,’ but Trump Administration Policies Don’t Promote It,” The New York Times online, July 18, 2017