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A Montana conservation group has asked the Interior Department to investigate whether Westmoreland Coal has the financial wherewithal to meet its mine-cleanup obligations. Questions have emerged also as to whether the company’s “self-bonding” commitments are sustainable in Texas and Canada. Westmoreland is widely reported to be at risk of bankruptcy.

A report from a think tank led by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz found that solar-industry jobs topped 350,000 last year, more than double the total in coal-related work. The report ties half of all 133,000 news jobs in the energy sector to efficiency initiatives. Solar is gaining also on the natural-gas industry.

Most discussion around the possibility of the federal government invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 in order to keep failing coal-fired and nuclear electricity plants alive has avoided exploring more sensible policy recommendations.

Continuing to subsidize eight struggling coal-fired power plants in Illinois makes no sense, concludes two researchers at the National Resource Defense Council: “Dynegy-Vistra has contrived a problem that does not exist, arguing that if its coal plants closed, electricity supply in Central and Southern Illinois would be in jeopardy and the likelihood of power outages would significantly increase. That’s simply not true.”

State officials plan to spend as much as $22.5 million to help expand a coal mine whose owner is in peril of bankruptcy and despite the loss of the mine’s main customer. “The developments regarding the mine and power plant raise questions about the economic future of Kemmerer, population 2,771, and surrounding communities,” where 300 people work at the Kemmerer Mine.

Various proposals for federal subsidies to coal companies are out of step with the times, says Peabody Energy’s hometown newspaper. Among the bailout mechanisms is invocation of the Defense Production Act, “an idea that tree-hugging liberals and free-market conservatives can all hate.”

Two years after Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of reviving the U.S. coal industry, families in coal country continue to struggle. “If you got fired tomorrow or quit tomorrow, there's absolutely no opportunity to get another [job],” says one miner. "You can't keep propping it up and hoping for it to last forever because it won't."

A formidable resistance has emerged to FirstEnergy Solutions’ request that the Energy Department let it raise electricity rates to keep its failing power plants alive. Opponents include the American Petroleum Institute, General Electric and Walmart. “Ultimately, it’s going to be very expensive, whether it puts the cost on ratepayers or taxpayers, all under this alleged emergency that doesn’t exist,” says one critic.

Southwestern Pennsylvania is among several regions that stand to benefit from a Just Transition Fund initiative supported by Google.org aimed at developing a post-coal economic-development strategy: "It's a complex, complicated problem, and it's going to take more than philanthropy to address it.”

Big Rivers Electric, an electricity cooperative that supplies power to 22 counties in western Kentucky, is seeking to end a contract with a Henderson coal-fired plant it has had in place since 1972. A Big Rivers spokesman said the cooperative has concluded the plant is "no longer capable of normal, continuous, reliable operation in an economic manner."