From peak to plummet in 15 years: Coal continues its precipitous decline
Not long ago, coal was booming in the United States. The country’s power generators used more of that fuel in 2007 than ever before — a little over 1 billion tons. Four years later, the generating capacity of the nation’s coal-fired power plants peaked at 318 gigawatts, enough electricity for 238 million homes.
But over the last decade, the U.S. energy sector has made a dramatic pivot away from the greenhouse gas-spewing fossil fuel. Research shows it continues to do so at an astonishing pace. Nearly half of the generating capacity seen in 2011 is expected to vanish by the end of 2026, according to a report published Monday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit think-tank focused on the global energy transition. The analysis also found that coal use by U.S. electric-power producers could hit …