Coal’s calamitous collapse

There’s no pussyfooting around it: Coal mining is in trouble.

Regulations have forced businesses to spend billion trying to clean the coal before it hits the air.

China, which burns half the world’s coal, is switching rapidly to natural gas and wind power.

European coal consumption is decreasing steadily.

Natural gas in North America has gotten much cheaper.

Clean-coal technology, once seen as the panacea to save the industry, raises the cost of coal-powered electricity generation by up to 80% and cuts efficiency by 30%.

The market capitalization of America’s four largest coal companies is $1.2 billion, an astounding and alarming freefall from $22 billion in 2010. That's only 5 years ago.

Coal mining employment went from 784,621 in the 1920s to 80,209 today. That’s almost a 90% drop. Few industries can survive such a staggering collapse.

And the annual production per miner is dropping steadily after it peaked in 2000. 

No wonder West Virginia has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. With the corn boom for gasoline and everything else, Nebraska is No. 1 on the good end of the unemployment list.

The glimmer of hope comes from poor countries, which prefer growth over greenery, particularly India.

Wyoming, with a more desirable type of coal, leapfrogged West Virginia as the No. 1 coal-producing state even though West Virginia has 20,281 coal miners to 6,673 in Wyoming.

You can real the entire article in The Economist by clicking on http://www.economist.com/news/business/21653622-coals-woes-are-spreading-it-still-has-its-fans-black-moods