Coal Mining Trucks With the market capitalization of the coal industry down 94 percent since 2011 , one question has to be paramount on the minds of all investors in the space– can the coal industry ever recover? The answer is that the odds don’t look good, at least for current equity holders. Coal continues to be a generally competitive source of power from an economics standpoint. The problem for the industry is that natural gas has become slightly cheaper, and perhaps more importantly, government regulation and social pressures have led to a complete halt in the construction of new coal plants. For similar reasons, many existing coal plants are being switched over to natural gas. This trend had been largely isolated to the U.S. with emerging markets still big consumers of coal. Now with the signing of the Paris Accord and increased efforts by Chinese authorities to curb […]