Some Time Ago we published this item here on Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

 North Antelope Coal Mine, Converse County Wyoming, 2005.  Taken from space with a Kodak 760C digital camera fitted with a 400 mm lens.

Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry:   Me, third from right, when I thought I had a career in geology, and probably in coal. There is a lot of speculation about a revival...

And today news is published in the Tribune to the effect that in spite of a recovery, to an extent, in coal, and in spite of a new regulatory environment, coal will not only never become what it once was it is, yes, on a continued downwards slide in the near term.

More specifically, the Tribune reports:

Production in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin could fall to about 260 million tons by 2023, according to the Annual Energy Outlook. Of the three coal regions in the country, the West and Appalachia are both poised to lose. Midwestern coal production may increase slightly.

This down from a pre crash output of 400 million tons.

Why?

. . . declining demand for coal to burn in power plants has rapidly eroded coal’s dominance in the electricity market. In the last three years, coal went from producing about 40 percent of the country’s electricity, to 30 percent. Wyoming in particular has lost nearly 1,000 miners since 2015, though a fraction has returned.

 * * *

Low natural gas prices are the key factor in the challenge to coal, said Linda Capuano, administrator of the Energy Information Administration, in a live release of this year’s outlook data.

As gas outcompetes coal in the electricity sector, the most expensive coal plants to run will continue to be shut down, she said.

Wyoming has already lost customers to this trend. Two coal-fired power plants slated to close in Texas bought the majority of their coal from Peabody Energy’s Rawhide mine north of Gillette.

Yup.  Just what I reported here a year ago.

Not that this should be news.  As I also reported, this trend is a century old now.  It's just entering a final and accelerated phase.  A phase which Wyomingites need to take note of, given the role coal has played in our budget for years.

Indeed, on that budget, we learned just yesterday that one of the legislators, contemplating the end of the a Federal severance tax that funds the Abandoned Mines fund, wishes to replace that tax with a state one. That would have no impact on the overall tax rate on coal, it would remain the same, and therefore it's not a bad idea.  But at the same time this report demonstrates why funding models based on coal have to be temporary in nature, or that they certainly can't occupy the place they once did.