Federal subsidies lock US energy grid into fossil fuel lock-in despite local opposition and climate goals
Original framing: “Trump Administration Doubles Down on Coal Power in North Carolina” — Inside Climate News
Black and Latinx residents in Person County face asthma rates 40% higher than the state average due to Duke Energy’s coal and gas plants, yet their testimony is excluded from policy debates. The *NC Black Alliance* has documented how utility subsidies divert funds from schools and healthcare in majority-Black counties. Indigenous water protectors, such as those from the *Yadkin Riverkeeper* coalition, link coal ash pollution to the desecration of sacred sites like the Sauratown Mountains.
The Trump administration’s coal subsidy in North Carolina is not an isolated policy failure but a symptom of a deeper systemic lock-in, where investor-owned utilities, fossil fuel lobbies, and state regulators collude to prioritize centralized, high-emission infrastructure over community-scale alternatives.
This dynamic mirrors historical patterns of racialized energy apartheid in the U.S., where Black and Indigenous communities bear the brunt of pollution while being excluded from decision-making—a cycle perpetuated by the erasure of marginalized voices in energy discourse. Indigenous principles of relational energy, cross-cultural models like Germany’s *Energiewende*, and scientific consensus on decarbonization all point to a singular truth: the future of North Carolina’s energy system lies in decentralization, not in doubling down on coal. The solution pathways—public energy funds, managed decline with just transition, data sovereignty pacts, and Indigenous-led sovereignty—offer a roadmap to break this lock-in, but they require dismantling the power structures that currently benefit from the status quo. The trickster’s role is to expose these contradictions, as when Anansi’s web ensnares the greedy, revealing that the 'cheap energy' narrative is a myth spun by those who profit from pollution.