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Economic-diversification proponents continue to promote passage of the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which would increase state investment in a program eight-fold, to $25 million, and create 13 new “jobs hubs.”

"From revitalizing our mine-scarred lands to taking care of the people who use to work in them, we still have a lot of challenges ahead of us,” one congressman said.

“Reinvestment—through utility-scale renewable power projects, infrastructure development, worker retraining, education, and other meaningful initiatives—is easily in the best interest of Arizona as a whole,” concludes a new study.

As decommissioning nears for the B.C. Cobb Generating Plant, the new owners of the 115-acre property see it as a candidate to become a deep-water marine-port terminal on Lake Michigan.

Corporate and industrial demand is driving the development of a nascent utility-scale solar industry in Kentucky. Brand-name companies that are promoting the shift include Dow Chemical, Toyota, Facebook and Google.

After a new nuclear power plant was cancelled, legislators from both parties endorsed a regionally progressive electricity-generation policy. “South Carolina Republicans have been ahead of the game,” one activist said.

As closure looms for a power plant and two mines, half the local tax base is at risk. “You’ve got law enforcement. You’ve got social services. You’ve got fire departments.”

As demand declines domestically for coal from production strongholds that include the Illinois Basin and the Powder River Basin, talk of replacing that customer base with foreign sales seems overblown.

Montana, Utah, and Wyoming want to force West Coast states to expand export terminals, even though that agenda “make little financial sense” because of weak foreign demand for U.S. coal.

“We’re gonna do it in a way that doesn’t harm workers,” one legislator said of a five-year timetable to close the state’s failing coal-plant fleet, which is barely used anymore.