‘Coal Is A Dead Man Walking’: A Look Back At 2014

King Coal ran into a slag heap of bad news in 2014.
From a groundbreaking U.S.-China deal to slash carbon pollution, to a plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to impose carbon limits on existing coal-fired power plants, to crumbling prospects for exports to Asia, to more dire predictions of coal plant retirements in coming years, to tanking stock prices for many of the industry’s giants, the U.S. coal industry has little to celebrate this holiday season.
Taken together, those developments give plenty of reasons to recall the 2011 pithy assessment of coal’s future by the head of asset management at Deutsche Bank. “Coal is a dead man walking,” said Kevin Parker. “Banks won’t finance them. Insurance companies won’t insure them. The EPA is coming after them … And the economics to make it clean don’t work.”
Or, as then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it last year, “Even though the coal industry doesn’t totally know it yet or is ready to admit it, its day is done … Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead. Coal is a dead man walking.”
On the domestic front, the EPA proposed a plan in June to cut carbon pollution from existing electric power plants by 30 percent from the levels released in 2005. Those facilities are the largest U.S. source and emit about one-third of our total carbon.

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Notes

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  8. peacesauce reblogged this from climate-changing
  9. edouardstenger reblogged this from climate-changing and added:
    No, I won’t cry at these funerals. “ Dasvidania ” coal, you won’t be missed !
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    GOOD.
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    Thank the stars, although the repercussions in areas of Appalachia could be terrible
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