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A comment on The US Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly. Parent comment

Re:The US Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly by Gibbon1 on Saturday June 20, 2020 @03:05AM (#23582336)
My gut feeling is that natural gas plants can make a profit by filling in for unmet demands created by renewables intermittency. You can make money by letting out contracts to provide standby capacity. That situation may last decades.

Coal plants though don't spin up fast enough to do that and are low margin as a result.

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Re:The US Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly by totalZero on Saturday June 20, 2020 @02:46PM (#23585844)
Responsiveness to demand is one thing. But even for steady-state generation, natural gas emits about half as much CO2 as coal.
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Re:The US Coal Industry Is Declining Irreversibly by Gibbon1 on Saturday June 20, 2020 @03:27PM (#23586345)
Yes the high carbon footprint means they are at risk of becoming uneconomic due to higher carbon taxes. Or forced to shut down due to outright regulatory action. Either likely to happen as the powers that be[1] get more and more spooked by climate change.

[1] Consider world wide only a minority of leaders have any particular personal interest in coal, oil, or gas.

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