The stocks of U.S. coal companies have almost completely collapsed.

But times have changed, and the market value of coal companies has collapsed. The four largest coal companies were worth a combined $21.7 billion dollars in June 2010. Now they’re worth $1.2 billion. Two other large coal concerns, Patriot and James River, have both filed for bankruptcy in recent years. And one market analyst told the Financial Times in February to expect “multiple bankruptcies in US coal over the next 12-18 months.”

They blame it on a combination of low natural gas prices and government regulation. I think it has more to do with the former – natural gas is cleaner and newly cheap, so there is just no reason to stay with coal. The regulators have probably been emboldened because they see that there are clear alternatives. There is no mention of renewables in this article, but I suspect they play a role.