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Coalition members are promoting a $650 million private capital program that would create several hundred jobs and shore up eroding tax bases by repurposing the Somerset power station.

Canada, Scotland and South Africa have established just transition commissions. Germany has won consensus by including “unions, industry associations, coal regions, scientists, local communities and environmental NGOs.”

“The blades are coming,” said a spokesman for the Duluth Seaport Port Authority. The port at Superior, Wisc., is also anticipating growth in freight traffic as the upper Midwest buys into wind-powered generation.

Some of the biggest retailers in the company are calling for new deals that would allow them to break Dominion Energy’s hold on the state’s electricity market. Legislators may be receptive.

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s electrification program, historically tied to coal, will increase its solar generation by as much as nine-fold over the next 20 years, enough to power millions of homes.

Germany’s “coal exit commission” is advancing a €40 billion government plan to compensate workers and companies affected by the country’s abandonment of coal-fired electricity over the next several years.

“The federal government can and should play a major role in transition and could even use the Hopi-Navajo situation as a springboard to develop a national coalfield reinvestment initiative,” write the authors.

Tri-State Generation Transmission, which has 43 co-op members in four states and remains disproportionately reliant on coal, declined an overture from a company seeking to bring cheaper, greener energy to the region.

Expensive “industrial shells” are left on the books as energy sources once considered alternative have gone completely mainstream.

In pushing for early retirement of coal plants, the utility behemoth Xcel is making a calculated move driven in no small part by ever-growing populist attitudes.