Coal has been displaced by cheap and plentiful natural gas and the rapid growth of wind and solar energy — forces that President Trump will struggle to do away with.
President Trump last week issued executive orders designed to revive the use of coal in power plants, a practice that has been steadily declining for more than a decade.
But the effort is likely to fail, energy experts said, because the fossil fuel faces some critical hurdles. The power that coal plants produce typically can’t compete with cheaper, cleaner alternatives. And many plants that burn coal are simply too old and would need extensive and expensive upgrades to continue running.
“It will be very difficult to reverse this trend,” said Dan Reicher, an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration and a former climate and energy director at Google. “There are a variety of forces at work that don’t paint a very bright future for coal.”
Why has coal use declined?
Once the primary source of electricity in the United States, coal plants now produce just 17 percent of the nation’s power. The main reason is that natural gas, another fossil fuel, became abundant and cheap because of the shale fracking boom that began in the early 2000s. Use of renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, has also grown a lot.
Natural gas now provides about 38 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power produce about 25 percent, and nuclear energy generates about 20 percent.
Some regions, like New England, are scheduled to shut down their last coal power plants soon. The most populous state in the country, California, uses virtually no coal for electricity generation.