, Columnist
From Wyoming to Australia, Coal’s Heartlands Are Retreating
The world is going through a remarkable energy transition as cheaper renewables push the fossil fuel into its death throes.
Sunset industry.
Photographer: MARIUS BECKER/DPA/AFP/Getty Images
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From the Rocky Mountains to the Rhineland and Australia’s Great Dividing Range, the great tide of the coal industry is receding.
The entire Powder River Basin, the region spanning the states of Montana and Wyoming that provides about half of America’s thermal coal, is “distressed,” Moody’s Investors Service wrote in a report last week. All companies producing coal there are now focusing on mining coking coal elsewhere in the U.S., the ratings company wrote. Output “will likely fall significantly in 2020,” it said.