>>>I personally watched Trump promise the people of West Virginia that coal would come back.
>>>He did it more than once.
>>>The second time, he had more people outside the convention hall than he had inside.
>>>It was a cynical lie.
>>>Barring some kind of miracle, coal will never come back and any simpleton can figure that out.
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>IMHO there are multiple uses for coal and multiple types/grades of coal.
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>If you're making steel, hard coal remains a good source of the required extreme heat and my understanding is that new coal mines in the US are for special metallurgical coals for this purpose. FWIW there was an anthracite coal mine in the South Island of NZ whose coal was so dense that the British Navy used it for battleships to increase speed by up to two knots. I'll bet you didn't know that. ;-) The coal is heavy and feels like a chunk of glass.
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>Only about 15% of coal is metallurgical and internationally the biggest source of pollutant/carbon from coal, is burning it for electricity. In the US there has been a huge fall in coal for electricity and therefore pollution as generators prefer cheaper natural gas. In response the coal industry has come up with various clean coal initiatives, but so far they're all expensive and represent "trick shots" compared to cheap natural gas.
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>Whether coal can come back for electricity depends on clean coal initiatives and cost. FWIW, the US has the biggest known reserves of coal that is relatively easy to mine and transport. It will be a shame if some use cannot be made of it.

This is pretty informative
https://www.eia.gov/coal/annual/
..if the electric power sector consumes almost all of the coal - then what happens when everyone is using solar? You can even feed power back into the grid when you're not using it all. Coal use may not completely disappear anytime soon - but it's going to be dwindling from now on. Kind of like the buggy whip - sure they still make them, but sure as heck don't sell them like they did before cars came along. I know plenty of people in Hawaii that haven't had an electricity bill in years and it paid for their solar panels in some cases in less than 4 years, and all new construction on the island has solar. Obviously if you're somewhere that gets less sun or where electricity is cheaper to begin with it might take longer to pay for itself (electricity is expensive in Hawaii and lots of sun, so it pays off quicker) - but still that's the direction its going - the panels are getting cheaper and more efficient every year. Digging rocks out of the ground is never going to be more effective than using the sun and wind in the long run. There will be more wind farms - and with any luck at all there will be more nuclear power as well if it can be done safely enough. It just seems that coal's days are numbered, and rather than embarking on a journey to save it, you'd be better off putting yourself in the position to have the best technology behind other sources like solar.

>Final point would be that sometimes we don't know what we don't know as we try to peer into the future. My anthracite story has an illustrative ending, since having the best anthracite lost its relevance when the battleships began burning diesel. ;-)

But we can peer into the past - and history shows us that those with the best technology tend to do quite a bit better than those who do not. And we can look at charts and grids to determine trends. Thus, we can tell which direction we should be aiming for now to ensure the best odds for a future. It's a forever moving target of course - you have to stay on top of it.