From peak to plummet in 15 years: Coal continues its precipitous decline". This is not an economic cycle that is simply going to go away. It is a real phaseout across the industry of the use of coal."   Over the last decade, the U.S. energy sector has made a dramatic pivot away from the greenhouse gas-spewing fossil fuel. Research shows it continues to do so at an astonishing pace. Nearly half of the generating capacity seen in 2011 is expected to vanish by the end of 2026, according to a report published Monday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit think-tank focused on the global energy transition. The analysis also found that coal use by U.S. electric-power producers could hit just 400 million tons this year. And roughly 40 percent of the country’s current coal-fired capacity is set to close by 2030.  “People were not predicting it was going to happen that quickly,” Seth Feaster, the report’s author and a data analyst at the institute, told Grist. “This is a long-term structural decline. This is not an economic cycle that is simply going to go away. It is a real phaseout across the industry of the use of coal.” Coal’s precipitous decline has resulted in large part from the natural gas boom and the rise of renewable energy. Their falling costs — owing to technological innovations and government incentives, like those in the Inflation Reduction Act — have made it cheaper to replace 99 percent of operating U.S. coal plants with solar and wind farms, according to a recent study from climate and energy think-tank Energy Innovation. Last year, more electricity came from renewables than from coal for the first time in U.S. history.  “Coal is unequivocally more expensive than wind and solar resources. It’s just no longer cost-competitive with renewables,” Michelle Solomon, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, told the Guardian.             https://grist.org/climate-energy/from-peak-to-plummet-in-15-years-coal-continues-its-precipitous-decline/