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The state’s main electricity cooperative is questioning a long-term power-supply deal that is “too reliant on coal-fired power plants” and “unfairly costs co-op customers millions of dollars.”

White House-engineered regulatory relief to prop up the coal industry continues to fall flat as markets shift. “The main challenge for coal is not regulation,” writes the author. “It’s technology.”

The Colstrip power plant, a pillar of the economy of southeastern Montana, may close earlier than anticipated as a result of the bankruptcy of Westmoreland Coal, its sole supplier.

Coal is being abandoned state by state for more economical electricity generation, including “in the heart of traditional fossil-fuel bastions where energy sensibilities are sometimes erroneously stereotyped as ‘anti-renewable.’”

Barring some form of bailout, FirstEnergy will proceed with a phaseout for its Ohio coal plants. The company is in bankruptcy after having failed to diversify its electricity-generation holdings.

“Utilities here and elsewhere haven’t jumped at the opportunity to return to coal, however, because they understand that in the long range it isn’t a wise choice either ecologically or economically.”

The remaking of Owensboro, Ky., is “both more complicated and more encouraging than the widespread job losses and civic desolation that characterize coal plant shutdowns in other Ohio River Valley towns.”

Market trends continue to drive an electricity-generation shift: “The boom in solar and wind power in the United States will deal a fresh blow to coal country in the next few years.”

The third-biggest U.S. coal company has become a penny stock. "I think that they survive, but how long they can at current conditions, it's hard to say,” one industry expert said.

A rollback of national monument boundaries has yet to yield any sign of new mining activity. “The question remains: Even if leasing restarts here, will anyone actually start digging?”