He directs the black lung program for Stone Mountain Health Services, which treats coal miners from Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. It’s more difficult, and seemingly more costly to miners’ health, to extract coal in Appalachia now. A notable example is the Texas utility Vistra Energy, which said in October 2017 that it planned to retire three coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts. The utility plans to replace the coal plant’s output with nuclear, natural gas and solar resources. And we’ll use them if we need to.”What seems clear from all three cases is that the coal industry isn’t coming back.

Source: New York Times February 19, 2018 16:07 UTC