Coal’s U.S. Downfall Is a Lesson for Power Markets

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Imagine that you’re a power engineer in 1975, designing and building the U.S. electrical grid. Coal is undoubtedly king, generating nearly three times as much as gas, oil, or hydropower. Nuclear power is a much smaller contributor, and there’s basically nothing else. Now imagine a time-traveling engineer from 2020 shows up and tells you that in 45 years nuclear power will be equal to coal, or even exceed it.