obama's war on coal.

Coal Shares.

The fall in gas prices and regulatory efforts by the EPA have depressed investor enthusiasm for coal companies.
The stock of Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU), the biggest U.S. producer, fell from more than $70 a share in April 2011 to less than $20 a share today. Arch Coal Inc. (ACI)’s stock fell from $35 a share in April 2011 to about $5 a share today.

Meanwhile, utilities are shuttering old coal plants, and switching to gas for baseload power production.
To deal with the threat of global warming, Obama directed the EPA to cap carbon pollution from power plants, which account for 40 percent of U.S. emissions.

The rules issued today set a limit on carbon-dioxide emissions from coal plants that can only be met with technology to capture that gas, and then inject it underground for storage.
That technology, called CCS, isn’t yet being used on a commercial scale as the first large-scale plant is under construction by Southern Co. in Mississippi. That plant, which received $270 million in subsidies from the federal government, is facing local opposition and $1 billion in cost overruns.

“Simply because EPA may set a carbon standard that requires CCS technology is insufficient to overcome the technical, legal, regulatory and financial hurdles facing CCS technology,” Scott Segal, a lobbyist at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP, which represents electric utilities such as Southern and coal producers such as Arch Coal, said in an e-mail before the EPA announcement.