coal

A key piece of the Obama administration's efforts to cut back on carbon emissions faces a test in court on Tuesday. An appeals court is hearing arguments on regulations announced last year.

For a long time, coal was king in eastern Kentucky. But the industry today is hemorrhaging jobs. The region is now struggling to rebuild its economy and find new jobs for unemployed miners.

In 2014, after disastrous spills and opposition from environmentalists, the EPA imposed new rules on the storage of coal ash. Two towns are pushing back against different ways of storing the ash.

The state's coal industry is shrinking fast; more than 10,000 workers have lost their jobs since 2008. A small firm in eastern Kentucky is turning unemployed coal workers into software developers.

Did Clinton really say she's going to put coal workers out of their jobs?

As the coal industry struggles with falling prices, weak Chinese demand, regulatory changes and competition from fracking, St. Louis-based Peabody has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The legislation, which calls for big utilities to stop relying on coal by 2030, emerged from a January agreement between the companies and environmental advocates.

The U.S. coal industry is fading. As more companies declare bankruptcy, they may not be able to pay for land restoration projects — and taxpayers could be left with the cleanup bill.

For decades, coal was king of electricity generation in the U.S., but that's changing. Across the country, coal power plants are being replaced with generators that run on cleaner burning natural gas.

The change won't affect existing leases, which generated nearly $1.3 billion for the federal government's coal program last year.

The coal region of western Kentucky has managed to keep its mining industry alive through changing energy trends of the past few decades. That is, until now.

Is renewable energy worth the cost? This is a question being debated in Paris this week. Though there's no simple answer, in South Africa the verdict is in.