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The disruption is happening sooner than anyone thought,” one official said. “There were plans that it would happen by 2030, 2035, 2040. Market conditions are bringing those sooner and sooner.

After spending $38 million against a ballot initiative on development of a renewable-energy industry, Arizona Public Service has abruptly changed course and will get rid of coal- and gas-fired generation.

As traditional forms of electricity generation struggle to compete, resilience is the defining character of rural wind farms, which bring jobs and tax revenues to a growing number of communities.

Even Kentucky is seeing an energy-industry makeover with retirements of the Drakesboro and Elmer Smith power plants this year. Consensus is that the state’s power-generation sector will continue to modernize.

A compromise around a long-planned national phaseout of coal-fired electricity has the government spending heavily—and regionally—on transition initiatives aimed at “compensating workers, companies and the four coal-producing states.”

EIA projections give wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass 21.6 percent of total electricity generation in 2021, topping coal’s 20.8 percent—less than half what it was a decade ago.

In announcing its acceleration of coal-plant closures in Colorado and New Mexico, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association said it would keep the affected 600 workers and their communities in mind.

A bill before the Legislature would set aside $35 million for renewable-energy projects on old mine sites. A separate proposal calls for phasing out fossil-fuel-fired power and supporting worker-transition initiatives.

Renewables promise a “new cash flow for Indian Country,” an elder said. “We can create our own economies. It’s basically a commodity. We can trade and sell our power.”

Pigments extracted from mine sludge will go into paints sold nationally by Gamblin Artist’s Oil Colors. “We’ve created a valuable commodity out of the waste product,” a project activist said.