The EPA’s decision to loosen Obama-era coal power plant rules couldn’t come at a more peculiar time, as the business community and states move toward a sustainable, clean future fueled by renewable energy sources.

It’s no longer a battle between economics and the environment. Technological innovations and consumer demand have driven down the cost of solar, wind and energy storage. In roughly two-thirds of the world, wind or solar are the lowest-cost options for increasing electricity capacity, according to the New Energy Outlook 2019 report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

What does this mean? When you compare the costs of competing energy technologies through a levelized cost, solar and wind are cheaper than coal. To this end, clean energy supports more than 3 million jobs nationwide, and that number continues to grow at a steady pace.

The scientific community recognizes the climate threats posed by the continued use of greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels. That alone makes the idea of burning more coal a strange one. But the transition to using clean energy also makes good business sense.

Even in red states such as Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott embraced solar and wind expansion for this very reason. My company, NexTracker, announced a deal to build the largest solar power plant in Texas at 236 megawatts — and larger projects are in the works reaching up to 500 megawatts statewide. Other states across the country are enacting ambitious renewable energy and carbon-free targets, including New York’s recent adoption of its own “Green New Deal” that just raised the bar.

The attempt to promote coal comes at a time when the global market demand has shifted elsewhere. The United Kingdom recently set a record for coal-free power generation, going two weeks without any coal-fired energy. The rest of Europe is also ramping up its use of solar, wind and hydro and drawing down their reliance on fossil fuels.

Coal supporters will argue that the technological boom is increasing our need for energy, particularly the power-hungry data centers that big tech companies rely on to run our array of devices. But even that demand is not going to boost the coal business. Environmentally conscious companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon all have recently made sizable investments in renewable energy to meet this growing demand. Further, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs for solar panel installers are expected to increase by 105 percent in the next five years.

The economic case is clear, and the market shift is under way. With the rollback of the Clean Power Plan, we will only add more pollution to the air without changing the coal industry’s trajectory.

“What happens when the sun doesn’t shine, or the wind doesn’t blow?” It’s another question that’s already been answered, though skeptics occasionally bring it up. Renewable companies like NexTracker are continuously developing technological solutions to improve energy dispatchability.

Energy no longer has to be used as soon as it’s generated. Utility-scale energy storage systems store and route electricity on and off the grid as needed. The grid itself is becoming smarter, better adjusting to consumer demand and avoiding energy waste, with smart thermostats in the home and utility-level artificial intelligence. Clean tech isn’t simply about replacing fossil fuels. It’s about improving everything our electrical grid does and making it better.

Concerns about whether renewables can work at a large scale are a thing of the past. At NexTracker, our online and under-contract projects equal 20 gigawatts of energy production, enough to keep the lights on for 42 million people globally. That’s more than the population of California (39.5 million).

The climate science is clear and real, and so are the economic realities.

The Trump administration ought to support new clean energy solutions, not prop up a declining industry that continues to threaten our planet’s existence.

Dan Shugar is CEO of NexTracker, a Fremont-based solar tracking company.