I worked at one of the United States' largest public utilities for decades and during my tenure our usage of coal dropped by 50%, and is continuing to drop. Wh

I worked at one of the United States' largest public utilities for decades and during my tenure our usage of coal dropped by 50%, and is continuing to drop. Why? It had nothing to do with any environmental policy, it was all financial: fracking made natural gas super cheap. It's simply cheaper to generate electricity using natural gas than coal. The kicker? A natural gas turbine plant can be built practically overnight and is much cheaper to operate. It also pollutes less and is advertised as being "green." Guess what happened? We shuttered several coal units as they reached the end of their amortization, and we stopped building any new units. The last time we built a new coal unit was during the Obama administration, and that unit had started its planning and financing during the Clinton administration. Everybody in the power industry knew Trump was an idiot (and blatantly pandering) when he talked about "saving coal." MONEY killed coal, not environmentalists.