In the “War on Coal,” the industry can be its own worst enemy

Coal has played a major role in U.S. energy production for decades, but environmental concerns have led to the rise of what some commentators have dubbed the “War on Coal”. Now, new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will essentially block the construction of new coal power plants, and force existing ones to use expensive carbon capture technology, meaning that coal will continue to lose ground to natural gas in U.S. energy production. Jessica Smith Rolston writes that the coal industry’s future-oriented advocacy of carbon capture technology and opposition to the EPA’s new regulations undermines its arguments that coal-fired energy can be ‘clean’ in the future.