Coal is mainly used for electricity, but there are other ways to generate electricity including natural gas, hydro and nuclear power. Coal is dying though. How can this be? Why is this happening? Furthermore, why is it not coming back as an economic force in the United States?
What is coal exactly? “Coal is a fossil fuel and is the altered remains of prehistoric vegetation that originally accumulated in swamps and peat bogs. The energy we get from coal today comes from the energy that plants absorbed from the sun millions of years ago” (World Coal Association). Basically, when plants die, their energy gets trapped because their “decaying process is interrupted, preventing the release of the stored solar energy,” and that’s where the energy gets locked in the coal (World Coal Association).
