There's a slowdown in coal mining because coal can't compete with natural gas with the latter at low prices.
That's not Obama's fault.
I think your seriously misinformed. The EPA is systematically killing the industry.
Just an endless stream of CON$ervoFascist Brotherhood BULLSHIT!
Who's Winning The Natural Gas Game? - Natural Gas Boom Threatens Coal - US Business News - CNBC
For U.S. power plant operators,
the economics of natural gas may have already dethroned coal as the nation's key source of electrical power.
"Natural gas is, and is likely to remain, the low-cost option for new generation capacity," says Mark Fulton, managing director of Deutsche Bank's DB Climate Change Advisors.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, estimates that nearly 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are recoverable in shale formations, like the Marcellus one that spans New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, significantly boosting national gas reserves to what some estimate is a 100-plus-year supply.
An abundant supply of fuel is great, but
modern gas-fired power plants also have lower operating costs than their antiquated coal-fired counterparts, folding in technological improvements that span not just years, but generations.
A November 2010 EIA report on power plant operating costs the latest data available found that
a typical coal-fired plant costs $2,800 to $3,200/kilowatt of generation capacity, while a modern natural gas-fired plant costs around $1,000/kilowatt.
Combine significantly cheaper fuel costs and leaner operating costs, and electricity from a convention coal fired plant costs 9.5 cents/per kilowatt hour to produce, compared with 6.6 cents at a conventional modern gas plant, according to EIA's Energy Outlook 2011.
Lower costs are already having an effect.
According to the most recent EIA figures, natural gas use in electricity generation rose by 40 percent year-over-year in March, while coal's market share fell by 20 percent.
While coal prices have also dropped by over 25 percent since April, experts say it won't affect the preference for natural gas.
The EIA says that of the 52 gigawatts (gw) of new power generation capacity to be added to the U.S. grid by 2015, half will come from natural gas. That's 10 times that of coal, which will fall into fourth place behind solar and wind power.
