A Kentucky County Anxiously Anticipates A Future Without Coal
Jon and Jim Rogers stand in the shadow of 50-foot-high piles of coal that are waiting to fuel the Paradise Fossil Plant in western Kentucky. Some of this coal belongs to the Rogers Brothers Coal Company.
The Rogers family has helped feed the Paradise plant with coal for decades. But by the end of 2020, they will need to find a new client. In February, the Tennessee Valley Authority [TVA] voted to close the last coal-fired unit at Paradise, despite objections from President Trump. In 2017, the plant’s other two units — the largest of their kind in the world when they went online in 1963 — were replaced with a power plant burning natural gas.
Coal plants have been retiring at a record pace in recent years, and coal stockpiles at U.S. power plants recently hit their lowest point in over a decade, according
