Unfortunately it's not as big a win as it sounds like. Per the article much of the economic force can be attributed to natural gas, which is better but not much, and most of the really huge coal plants have just adapted to regulation and don't show signs of imminent closure.
Don't forget the heavy metals (lead, arsenic, mercury), radiation (coal ash is literally more radioactive than some nuclear waste) and particulate matter releases that come from burning coal. Natural gas isn't optimal but it is FAR better than coal.
> coal ash is literally more radioactive than some nuclear waste
Please do not repeat this nonsense. It either compares non-power-plant waste (lab gloves used in isotope labelling, for instance), or is so wrong as to be ludicrous.
Used nuclear fuel is billions of times more radioactive than coal ash.
Yes, but that nuclear waste is in storage pools. The waste from the coal plants is in the air we breath and the ash-spills effect the water we drink.
Or better yet, walk around an operating nuke plant with a radiation detector and then do the same walk around an operating coal plant. I am willing to bet the coal plant will spike higher.
It's not just the CO2 picture for emissions, keep in mind methane is a far more potent GHG and there is going to be some amount of leakage in the workflow of getting gas from fracking to the turbine. Colorado has the gold standard regulation for methane emissions, check it out:
It also has some potential for being gradually replaced, like mixing in renewable hydrogen, using methane captured from closed coal mines that would otherwise leak, methane from food and farm waste etc. and those then transition into being carbon neutral or negative ways to store energy for rarely used peaker plants to support the grid.
Coal is really, really bad from an environmental standpoint, even compared to natural gas, even with the methane issue factored in. Coal is really bad.
