Trump's moves won't stop coal's decline

Washington

IN Page, Arizona, the operators of the Navajo Generating Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in the West, have announced plans to close it by 2019. The electric utility Dayton Power & Light will shut two coal plants in southern Ohio by next year. Across the country, at least six other coal-fired power plants have shut since November, and nearly 40 more are to close in the next four years.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to restore the limping US coal industry, vowing to bring jobs and production back to a sector that has been on a steady decline for more than a decade.

But to do that, he would have to revive demand for coal by electric utilities, which for decades have been the largest consumer of the heavily p…