[cguess]

> Coal is cheap

Only if you ignore all externalities including:

- environmental damage from mining (yes this exists for renewables too)

- global warming

- pollution on city infrastructure

- pollution on health

- the sunk costs causing higher transition costs when inevitably you transfer to renewables anyways.

[Qwertious]

>Only if you ignore all externalities

Not even then. Coal is dead, and gas killed it. The externalities are a distraction, coal plants are just straight-up uneconomic.

[dylan604]

> Only if you ignore all externalities

Do not discount how easy that is to do. Your list is of costs not to any bottom line of a company with bean counters. Those external costs are out side the scope of their concerns. Your list of concerns would be something for C-suite types, but the pressure of stock prices again make the external costs easy to set aside.

[cguess]

Sure, but as a consumer you can also care about these things.

[dylan604]

Sure, but there's only so many places to buy electricity from