United States coal production and coal-fired plant electricity production has been slashed by half during the past decade, and may not survive through the first two years of a Joe Biden Administration, as Biden, under his Green New Deal, has vowed to shut down fossil fuel-based electricity generation. U.S. coal production, and coal-fired electricity generation have been under a ferocious international assault.
Prince Charles, for example, in an Oct. 27, 2015 video address to international financiers in London, called for “business leaders to divest from a fossil fuel industry increasingly on the skids,” reported the National Observer. The Prince of Wales was joined by Carbon Tracker Initiative founder Mark Campanale, who has targetted coal for shutdown. On June 7, 2019, Sir Michael Bloomberg announced that he would contribute $500 million toward closing U.S. coal-fired power plants, as part of his Beyond Carbon Initiative.
As a result of these campaigns, more than half of U.S. coal-fired plants have been shuttered—299 to date. The U.S. Department of Energy’s International Energy Administration data report that in 2010 U.S. mines produces 1.08 billions of short tons of coal, which has been halved to 537 million short tons of coal for 2020 (on an annualized basis). Furthermore, annual U.S. coal-fired electricity generation fell from 1.85 billion megawatt-hours generated in 2010, to 965 million Mwh in 2019, also halved. For comparison, the U.S. has never lost half of its coal-fired electricity generation within any decade in its history.
