It was another tough year for the coal industry. In the last 25
months not one coal-fired power plant broke ground for
construction in the United States. In 2010 alone a total of 38
proposed plants were erased from the drawing board, the most
ever recorded in a single year. Utilities also announced 12,000
MW in coal plant retirements -- or enough power to bring
electricity to a whopping 12 million American households. And
even Massey Energy's infamous henchman Don Blankenship is set to
retire, effective next month.
Indeed coal executives got what they deserved in their stockings
this holiday season -- big lumps of black coal. "I predict
historians will point at 2010 as the year that coal's influence
peaked and began declining," says Bruce Nilles, deputy
conservation director of the Sierra Club, whose organization
released a year-end report on coal in the U.S.
Nilles is correct; the coal boom out west looks to be over, as
companies like Arch and Peabody scramble to figure out what to
do with their vast reserves while U.S. markets begin to dwindle.
The EPA has also not been as friendly to this portion of the
energy sector as in years past, placing most coal permits for
mountaintop removal on hold and even recommending a veto of the
proposed Spruce Mine in West Virginia, which would be the
largest of its kind in the country.