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With scare studies, policy drafts and political donations, industry groups turned Ohio lawmakers against policies they once overwhelmingly supported.

“‘Sometimes you have to let go of your past’ to prepare for the future’” said one member of a panel of utility executives who see “a tremendous movement away from coal.” Among the companies represented this week at a Florida forum hosted by the Edison Electric Institute: PNM of New Mexico, Hawaii Electric Industries, El Paso Electric and Alliant Energy of Wisconsin.

Several Trump administration policy proposals aimed at propping up the coal industry stand to slow the growth momentum of solar- and wind-powered electricity generation. They include “asking regulators to rewrite power market rules, revamping the tax code, and imposing tariffs on foreign-made solar panels.”

The “sleeping giant” of Virginia’s economy is the “advanced energy” sector, which employees more than 75,000 people in the energy efficiency sector—about as many as work in grocery stores—and 4,300 in the burgeoning solar industry, almost twice the number who work coal, oil, and natural gas.

A new study that includes an “all-in comparison of the costs” shows traditional forms of electricity generation at an increasing free-market disadvantage to renewable energy, which is likely to continue to grow with or without subsidies.

“The coal industry has stabilized, but it’s not going to come back,” said Blair Zimmerman, a former miner and now the commissioner for Greene County, one of Pennsylvania’s oldest coal regions. “We need to look at the future.”

The latest employment data from the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet shows jobs weakness in coal. “We are stopping the bleeding, but it has not stopped,” said the president of the Kentucky Coal Association. “We’re starting to get to that flat-lining point.”

A shift toward wind and natural gas in the Texas electricity-generation sector has been a “one-two punch” for coal suppliers, says one expert. “If solar really takes off as ERCOT predicts, that will replace a good amount of generation from conventional generators during the daytime. I would consider that the third punch.”

The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the grid operator PJM Interconnection and the free-market Buckeye Institute are among those filing objections to a Trump administration proposal to subsidize the coal industry.

A fact-check on assertions by President Trump that he has “turned West Virginia around” with energy-policy rhetoric does not hold up to scrutiny.