Liam Denning, Columnist

Subsidizing Coal Is Far From Conservative

Rick Perry, Trump's energy chief, flouts the free market when it comes to power generation.

October 23, 2017 at 6:30 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Let the market work.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Energy Secretary Rick Perry's proposal for "reforming" power markets is, in a word, nuts. One thing it isn't, in a word, is conservative.

Monday marks the deadline for initial public comments on Perry's plan. It would subsidize unregulated power plants holding 90 days worth of fuel onsite, effectively shielding those that use either coal or uranium from the market.