According to Bloomberg's financial analytics team, coal-fired energy production is expected to collapse over the next 23 years to the point of irrelevance.
“This year’s report suggests that the greening of the world’s electricity system is unstoppable, thanks to rapidly falling costs for solar and wind power, and a growing role for batteries, including those in electric vehicles, in balancing supply and demand,” Seb Henbest, lead author of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s 2017 New Energy Outlook report, said in a statement. [...]
Even as President Donald Trump takes steps to increase coal use, the market isn’t likely to rebound in the U.S. Coal-fired power is expected to fall by 51 percent over the next two decades. In its place, gas-fired electricity will increase 22 percent, and renewables by a massive 169 percent.
There are caveats. Bloomberg's estimation assumes current financial trends will hold, but it seems reasonable to assume alternative energy production will continue to get cheaper, not more expensive. Solar power is already cheaper than coal and will soon be cheaper than gas. Republicans would have to ban solar panels to stop them now, but let's not give them any ideas.
Unfortunately, the rapid establishment of alternative energy may not happen quickly enough to limit global warming to an acceptable level, especially not if the Trump regime slow-walks the process here in America.