For those curious, this article somewhat oversimplifies the situation. Coal is dying anyway. "Clean coal" generally refers to coal => gasification => carbon c

For those curious, this article somewhat oversimplifies the situation. Coal is dying anyway. "Clean coal" generally refers to coal => gasification => carbon capture. This is possible, just more expensive than burning raw coal, which itself is now more expensive than natural gas. Mostly because of fracking, at least in the US, natural gas is much cheaper than buying coal. Compounding that, renewable energy creates high flexibility in peak demand, so plants designed to operate as baseload sources cannot amortize costs as effectively. Additionally, HVDC lines are making regional proximity less important, so gas/coal locality plays less of a role in pricing. The market is shifting to peaker plants, like natural gas, which have very low capital costs and can turn on/off quickly. This kills of coal and nuclear anyway, which have to run 24/7 to stay cost competitive. Barring some energy storage miracle, we'll eventually end up with ~35% renewables, 15% hydro, 50% natural gas in the US, with HVDC interconnect. (source: climate and energy R&D group)