“Welcome to the small-government party. What kind of subsidies would you like?” Credit: CAP Photo/Susan Walsh
The US coal industry is dying — but not with any dignity. As the end approaches, its sense of aggrieved entitlement is increasingly naked, its demands for government handouts increasingly frantic. As dread builds, shame has left the building.
The story of coal’s decline has been told many times now (see this post for more), but at root, it’s not complicated: The industry’s product is outmoded.
Natural gas and wind power are cheaper than coal power in most places, and solar power is heading the same direction. What’s more, wind and solar (variable renewable energy, or VRE) and natural gas complement each other. VRE is completely clean but variable. Natural gas is moderately clean but flexible. Variable and flexible work well together; they are the basis for the modern grid. (Whether we can find equally flexible but entirely clean alternatives to natural gas in the coming decades is the most pressing issue facing the […]
I agree with Bob Murrey that the decline of coal is a national emergency. That is to say, we need it to decline as much as possible as fast as possible! Strip the coal industry of subsidies like they strip mine mountains. Coal has poisoned every American who breathes air or drinks water. Coal fly ash solid waste spills are a disaster and fly ash apparently is being used in solar radiation management programs to poison us all over again. Time to stop the theft and poisoning of the American taxpayer and hold our sorry excuse for a government directly accountable..starting with TVA, DOE and EPA and ending with the monopoly utility industry.