Coal is abundant and cheap and well suited to day and night base load power. The emissions are awful but there is no suitable replacement right now which fits those criteria (nuclear falls down on the cheap point). Sure, we can keep burning natural gas like it's going out of style but at some point demand is going to push up supply again.
Until grid level storage is well proven (and not geographically constrained like pumped hydro) that is the reality.
Until grid level storage is well proven (and not geographically constrained like pumped hydro) that is the reality.