From cybersecurity to new carbon regulations, myriad challenges face the U.S. electric industry. The greatest challenge to U.S. electrical system security, however, remains hidden in the country's collective blind spot: the possible loss of significant coal supplies in the coming decade. The prevailing but unspoken assumption has long been that if the U.S. needs more coal, then more coal will be produced. That assumption is no longer good as U.S. coal companies rapidly approach the end of economically recoverable coal. With the easily accessible coal deposits already mined, the cost of producing coal often exceeds the price for which the coal can be sold-even with thermal coal prices' increasing at two to three times the rate of inflation over the past decade. The increasing number of closing Appalachian coal mines is the most visible indicator that the U.S. coal industry is rapidly getting to the end of coal that can be mined profitably.
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