Last coal unit at iconic Paradise plant shuts down; U.S. coal production and employment keep going down - Entrepreneur Generations

Despite Republican lawmakers' "best efforts to make good on Trump’s campaign promise to save the beleaguered coal industry, including an eleventh-hour pressure campaign, the Tennessee Valley Authority power plant at Paradise burned its last load of coal last month," Dylan Lovan reports for The Associated Press. "The plant’s closure — in a county that once mined more coal than any other in the nation — is emblematic of the industry’s decadeslong decline due to tougher environmental regulations, a major push toward renewable energy and a rise in the extraction of natural gas. The shuttering of businesses nationwide and a reduced need for energy amid the global coronavirus pandemic threatens to deal coal yet another devastating blow."

The plant once had the world's largest coal-fired burners and was fed by a mine with "the world's largest shovel," as noted in the 1971 song "Paradise" by John Prine, whose father came from the long-deserted town that gave the plant its name.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2wFbvXW Last coal unit at iconic Paradise plant shuts down; U.S. coal production and employment keep going down - Entrepreneur Generations

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