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Reply to "Trump Fights Non Existent War on Coal"

EPA regulations are more than relevant:

The natural gas renaissance has helped to cause the decline of the coal industry through its use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology, causing average natural gas prices to electric utilities to decline 64 percent since 2008. But what has pushed the closure of coal power plants is the Obama Administration’s adoption of more stringent standards to regulate carbon dioxide emissions that it believes contribute to climate change, and to further regulate pollutants that it believes are harmful to human health, despite regulations already in place that have been very effective. For example, criteria pollutants (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead and particular matter) declined by 63 percent between 1980 and 2014, despite gross domestic product increasing 147 percent, population increasing 41 percent and energy consumption increasing 26 percent between those years.

http://instituteforenergyresea...rican-industry-coal/

Industries so screwed over by crony capitalist despots don't rebound overnight and only a simpleton would expect an instant miracle. Even if EPA regulations relax now, utilities don't know who will be president in 2021 and I doubt that they can permit and build a new coal plant before then even if the costs are feasible now. So yes, any coal country recovery is going to be very slow.


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