U.S. utilities have made a significant move away from coal-fired power generation in the past decade, evidenced by a continuing stream of announced coal plant retirements.
That transition has been partly driven by new generation from renewable resources, such as wind and solar power. New data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released August 5, though, shows that a large part of that transition came as generators repurposed those coal plants to run on natural gas, or built new gas-fired plants to replace electricity generated by burning coal.
