Ten years ago, coal was the source of nearly half of the US’s electricity.

From the New York Times today:

“The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record.”

Yay?

“And it comes despite the Trump administration’s three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry by weakening pollution rules on coal-burning power plants.”

Doh!

“Those efforts, however, failed to halt the powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently.”

Simply put, coal is now too expensive.

Surreal, but true.

“The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom.”

Today’s elephant in the room is brought to you by natural gas.

Natural gas is still a fossil fuel. It just emits less CO2 than coal, that’s all.

About half as much.

Around two thirds of the slack from the drop in coal use in the US over the last decade was taken up by natural gas, one third by renewables.

The overall total electricity generation was pretty much unchanged over those ten years though.

This is therefore a true drop in CO2 emissions from electricity production.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!

[Cover photo: Libby March for The New York Times. It’s a photo of New York State’s last coal burning plant before being shut down in March 2020.]