80% of Coal Power Plants in the EU Are Bleeding Red Ink

As I mentioned, the local high school kid I’m tutoring in history is studying the Industrial Revolution and its broad economic and social ramifications.  Among the most important points here is laizzes faire capitalism / free market economics, as represented by Adam Smith and his “invisible hand.” 

Granted, energy markets are not good examples of this, as they are manipulated, not only by subsidies, but by our granting tacit permission for the fossil industry to use our atmosphere as its own private sewer, i.e., allowing them to externalize the cost of the damage they’re doing to human health and the environment as a whole.

Having said that, it is the force of pure market economics that is aggressively knocking coal out of the picture.  What happens when, as reported by think tank Carbon Tracker, four out of five of coal power plants in the European Union are losing money?  Shutdowns.  The report, Apocalypse Now, warns governments and investors to concentrate on enabling shutdowns that are as low in cost as possible and to find ways to compensate communities hit hardest by the closures.

It’s hard to watch people lose their jobs, though somehow we seem to have far more heartburn when it comes to coal miners than we did about fax machine manufacturers or landline telephony providers.  Industries come and go, and, in the case of coal, its passing is good news for 99.99% of the people on this planet.