By Christopher Klaver
CIO
Posted: June 2, 2017 1:31 PM

Make no mistake, President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord will have lasting effects: it is one more indicator that Mr. Trump does not feel obliged to maintain agreements reached by his predecessors and leaving other world leaders questioning where the United States stands in the world order.

But that is, at best, an eight-year legacy of the decision.

The longer-term legacy of the decision is not necessarily the climate risk that many posited Thursday when Mr. Trump announced it.

First, the emissions reductions to which the prior administration agreed were not pulled out of a hat. There is general agreement that power production is the top source of carbon emissions and, even if they did not all publicly support the agreement, the heads of the nations’ power companies had input into those numbers and said they could come close to meeting those standards.

Given the time needed to plan and build a base load power plant, it is not likely too many utilities are going to shift gears now that most new power plants will use natural gas and change fuels just because the accord is no longer driving decisions.

Michigan utilities could have joined the push against former President Barack Obama’s clean power initiatives, especially after federal courts overturned parts of them. Instead, Consumers and DTE both said they were already on track to meet those standards and had no plans to change course.

Second, economics are shifting. While credit can be given to subsidies and regulations that might not survive Mr. Trump’s administration, cleaner energy sources than coal are also now less expensive than coal. Minus a subsidy in the other direction, those price advantages appear to be growing and coal seems unlikely to regain its foothold as the dominant fuel for power and industry.

The move to natural gas for power production could be a boon for Michigan, which not only has apparently abundant supplies (leaving the fracking controversy for another day), but also abundant storage to allow utilities and others to buy low and stockpile.

Michigan is also playing some key roles in developing new power sources. Researchers at Michigan State University, for instance, developed new clear solar panels that could be used in vehicles and other applications where it could be an advantage to have both a window and an electric generator.

Finally, public sentiment is shifting. A relatively conservative Michigan legislature just approved an increase to the state’s renewable power mandate. That would not have happened without some pressure on both legislative leaders and utilities, whether economic or social, to do the right thing for the environment.

And this writer can’t help but feeling there is a bit of history rewriting involved in the president’s push to change this and other treaties, something in line with the ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s practice of chiseling off the stories extolling their predecessors and replacing them with tales of their own glories.

Mr. Trump has yet to say, on the Paris accord, NATO or the North American Free Trade Agreement, that the U.S. is out and never going back. Rather, he wants to renegotiate, put his stamp on the agreements. Like with his apartments, offices and hotels, he wants to see his name blazoned on the documents.