Coal is mostly sticking around in the US because of federal overreach to keep unprofitable and ancient coal generators going long after anybody wants to pay for the high maintenance.

Last week, a Colorado utility was "respectfully" asking to be able to close a plant:

> TTri-State Generation and partner Platte River Power Authority had a “respectful” but emphatic response late Thursday to the Trump administration ordering them to keep Craig’s Unit 1 coal-fired plant open past the New Year:

> They don’t need it, they don’t want it, and their inflation-strapped consumers can’t afford the higher bills. Plus, the federal order is unconstitutional.

https://coloradosun.com/2026/01/30/craig-tri-state-petition-...

TVA has also been begging to close a money losing coal plant for a while now, writing letters to FERC about it, but I can't find the link now.

New coal is far too expensive to build anymore too. Handling big amounts of solid material is expensive, and big old unresponsive baseload is undesirable for achieving economic efficiency.

Even China, which is still building new coal plants, is lessening their coal usage. Personally I think they'll keep some around to continue economic influence on Australia, which is one their primary countries for experimenting with methods to increase their soft power.

There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power today.

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gwd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power today.

For anyone wanting a slightly ranty but also informed description of why, I enjoyed this Hank Green video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfvBx4D0Cms&pp=ygUPaGFuayBnc...

	▲	darknavi 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Technology Connections also released a great rant on it (and more) recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

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prodigycorp 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. There's politics that gets flagged on this site, and there's politics that makes me think about things with more clarity. Yours is obviously the latter.

	▲	epistasis 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Collective decisions are unavoidably political, and grid electricity has to be a collective decision! My hope is that we can take the partisan aspect out of the politics, however, and reduce it to a discussion of the tradeoff of values: cost, reliability, climate, and any other values that we need to include. Fortunately I think that for nearly any value set, the answer is very similar.

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throw900912 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> to keep unprofitable and ancient coal generators going long after anybody wants to pay for the high maintenance.

In EU 90% of expenses of running coal plants are taxes, yet it can still compete with subsidized green energy! It would be in everybody best interest, to allow building modern coal plants, to replace toxic inefficient stuff from 1960ties.

But with the overregulated and overtaxes industry, we have the worst from all options.

	▲	epistasis 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		In the US, natural gas is extremely cheap, far cheaper than in the EU, and it will remain that way as long as we are still extracting oil via fracking. Replacing existing coal with natural gas is better, cheaper, etc. etc. and it's just downright "dumb" to build coal as explained in a parallel comment that links to youtube. But even new natural gas is likely to end up as stranded capital. Solar and wind are cheaper already, and backing that with storage, today, is nipping at the cost of most new natural gas plants. And in 3, 5, 10 years? Price trends are going to make even the cheap cost of natural gas as a fuel more expensive than using solar and storage. I'd be very surprised if 90% of the expense of coal was tax, as that would make taxes 9x higher than fuel. Not surprised because it wouldn't make scientific sense, the negative externalities of coal are massive and any hard-nosed free marketer should be advocating for putting a price on those negative externalities, but surprised because the politics of Europe allow that! Also, if taxes on coal or >9x the cost of the fuel, wouldn't that start to make natural gas much more cost effective too, even in Europe? Or does natural gas have similar taxes?

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prasadjoglekar 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power today.

A quick look at the PJM interconnect data would disagree with you. About a quarter of the live power is coal.

https://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx

That serves 65+ Million people in the north east and is keeping them from dying of cold this past week, including today (Temp outside in the mid-hudson valley is 15F / -9C), and overnight will be 8F / -13C).

Just for context - electricity somehow powers everything in most homes. Your oil or propane furnace needs a power hookup to ignite.

	▲	16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
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	▲	ipdashc an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		PJM probably isn't a great example, it's been famously slow to approve new generation, hasn't it? And the rates aren't exactly super cheap. We shouldn't get rid of coal without having something to replace it (ideally nuclear/solar/wind, but realistically probably gas), but I think the point was just that nobody would build a new coal plant today or keep them running for longer than they need to. They're inefficient and fairly expensive.
	▲	breakyerself an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Coal is the most expensive form of energy. We need the energy those coal plants are producing, but we don't need the energy to come from coal and the sooner we replace those coal plants the sooner the people getting that energy can get a break on energy costs. Assuming data centers don't offset the reductions via creating excessive demand.
	▲	tclancy an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		As much as it is fun to imagine you believing the false dilemma you've presented, I don't think the OP was suggesting not providing another option.