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In a new survey by management firm Black & Veatch, 61 percent of utility executives see renewables as their biggest likely electricity-generation investment over the next five years. “Rather than viewing these resources as intermittent, and thus unreliable, they now believe they can harness this distributed supply and with it, improve system flexibility and resilience.”

With the closure of the Sandow Coal Power Plant a few weeks off, the east-central town of Rockdale is trying to come to grips with the loss of hundreds of jobs. The plant is one of three being shuttered by Luminant, the biggest power producer in Texas. “Whatever happens, everyone agrees Rockdale needs to attract more industry and employers.”

The State of Pennsylvania has earmarked $30 million for an initiative that will pay companies $5,000 for every solar job created and loan up to $40,000 on solar projects. “Developing new renewable energy sources including solar is critical to ensuring Pennsylvania has a balanced and diverse energy mix that maintains our position as a major energy producing state,” said Gov. Tom Wolf.

A wave of coal-fired electricity plant retirements— in Kentucky, Missouri, Montana and Texas — add to a toll that continues to add up nationally. The closures accelerate a trend in which nearly twice as much coal-generation capacity will be retired in 2018 compared to 2017.

An organization called Mined Minds has certified 80 former coal miners in computer-coding skills and sparked an initiative to open coding “boot camps” statewide. "I think it gives us a chance to diversify ourselves and be something people think we are not," says the state’s senior U.S. senator.

The owner of a relatively new coal-fired power plant in Montana says it will probably close next year after having lost money since 2014. The closing will affect about 30 people and will put the company, Heorot Power, further behind on $2 million in delinquent tax obligations to local schools and government.

An “instructive moment” in U.S. coal markets occurred this month in a failed deal between Murray Energy and Bowie Resource Partners that shows how investors have lost much of their faith in such holdings.

A newspaper columnist in favor of economic diversification in West Virginia sounds a note of caution over a Chinese proposal to invest $83.7 billion in natural-gas production in the Mountain State. “We can build tourism, high-tech manufacturing or, perhaps health care innovation … we can refuse to become reliant on a single industry.”

The City Council has directed Colorado Springs Utility to “analyze possibilities” for closing the city’s coal-fired power plant in 2025, a decade soon than planned. Colorado regulators have ruled that the 80-year-old Martin Drake Power Plant, considered a blight on the downtown area, is out of compliance with air-pollution standards.

Lawmakers are being pressed to increase New Mexico’s renewable energy generation mandate to 50 percent of total electricity generation in the state, from 20 percent. The state’s biggest utility, Public Service Company of New Mexico, is already planning to be out of the coal business by 2031.