{"id":296722,"date":"2025-10-12T07:24:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T07:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/296722\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T07:24:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T07:24:20","slug":"coal-in-a-fight-against-the-free-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/296722\/","title":{"rendered":"Coal in a fight against the free market"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Will the promise of \u201cclean, beautiful coal\u201d deliver for Montana, or has the Powder River Basin been sold a bag of beans?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a question weighing heavily on coal country and the communities it supports after the largest federal auction of a coal lease in the past decade produced deeply disappointing results.<\/p>\n<p>Navajo Transitional Energy Co. was the only company to bid last week on the lease in southeast Montana, offering just $186,000 to lease 167 million tons of coal \u2014 less than a penny per ton.<\/p>\n<p>The result was so underwhelming that federal officials immediately canceled a coal lease sale in Wyoming that had also been scheduled for last week.<\/p>\n<p>The news outlet <a href=\"https:\/\/wyofile.com\/trumps-major-coal-sales-flop-in-wyoming-and-montana\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WyoFile reported<\/a> that market analysts were stunned by the Montana bid. The last major sale in 2012 totaled $793 million at about $1.10 per ton.<\/p>\n<p>Interior Department officials blamed the lowball bid on energy policies that favor renewables. They said President Donald Trump would ultimately unleash \u201cAmerican energy dominance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But industry experts suggest the problem is more complex than politics. Natural gas is a cheaper option, and demand for wind and solar alternatives has increased as the technologies become more efficient. Meanwhile, the nation\u2019s arsenal of coal-fired plants is being shuttered as they reach the end of their life cycle \u2014 hundreds of coal power plants have closed over the past decade, with many more set to retire in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p>The writing is on the wall in North Dakota and Minnesota, where Xcel Energy is closing its coal-fired plants in favor of a mega solar farm that will power 150,000 homes. The company said solar is more attractive over the long term because it doesn\u2019t have fuel costs after installation. A new battery facility at the site will offset any weather variability that affects power output, the company said.<\/p>\n<p>Energy analyst Seth Feaster told WyoFile the Montana sale flop can\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt points to the fundamental, structural decline the coal industry is facing \u2014 for thermal coal \u2014 and that story hasn\u2019t been reversed, despite all the things that they\u2019re talking about,\u201d Feaster said.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Trump\u2019s and Gov. Greg Gianforte\u2019s full-court press in support of coal, winners rise to the top in a supply-and-demand economy. Last week\u2019s auction made it clear that coal is on the losing end of what might be a futile fight against the free market.<\/p>\n<p>If a return to coal\u2019s glory days is in the cards \u2014 which would undoubtedly benefit Montanans \u2014 it will require years, if not decades, of incentives and innovation, much like those received by renewables, to tip the scales in the industry\u2019s favor. Even then, the odds remain steep in a market increasingly driven by cheaper, cleaner alternatives.<\/p>\n<p>So how long will coal country be convinced to cling to the baseless promise that a legacy industry can be resurrected with the stroke of a pen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will the promise of \u201cclean, beautiful coal\u201d deliver for Montana, or has the Powder River Basin been sold&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":296723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,135,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-296722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-markets","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115360003864330838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}