Investors will figure out that coal is growing scarce and too expensive.
It's great that the New York Times is asking "Is America Ready to Quit Coal?" but the real question may be "Will we have any choice?"
On February 12, Clean Energy Action released a report on Powder River Basin coal supplies, based in part on a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report. The Powder River Basin matters because Western coal has been the only source of new coal production in the U.S. for the last two decades. Appalachian and interior coal production has been declining, despite mostly increasing prices and uniformly increasing prices since 2003. Northern Appalachian coal production peaked in the middle of the last century, while interior coal production peaked at the start of this decade. When production declines in the face of rising prices, constraints other than economics must be coming into play. Future increases in production in these regions seems unlikely....
