Though a lot has changed since 2016, not much has changed for energy economics in the US. The cost of wind generation continues to fall, solar costs are falling, too, and the cost of coal-power energy has seen no movement, while the cost of building and maintaining nuclear plants has gone up. And none of those conclusions reflect subsidies and tax credits applied by the federal government.

The battle to end coal-burning, backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, is expanding out of the US and around the world in its bid to reduce the global warming threat posed by the most polluting fossil fuel. Bloomberg, a UN special envoy on climate change and former mayor of New York city, has funded a $164m campaign in the US since 2010, during which time more than half the nation’s coal-fired power plants have been closed.

German coal use could end by the 2030s, the politician charged with brokering a coalition government deal on energy told Climate Home News. The comments came amid a critical political discussion over a coal phase-out in Germany, a UN climate conference in Bonn and news that German carbon emissions are likely to rise again in 2017. Armin Laschet, the minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia and a member of chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU), has been locked in negotiations with Greens and Free Democrats over the future of coal in Germany.

The Trump administration made its debut at a United Nations conference on climate change on Monday by giving a full-throated defense of fossil fuels and nuclear energy as answers to driving down global greenhouse gas emissions. The forum — the only official appearance by the United States delegation during the annual two-week climate gathering of nearly 200 nations — illustrated how sharply the administration’s views are at odds with those of many key participants in the climate negotiations.

The UK and Canada have launched a global alliance of 20 countries committed to phasing out coal for energy production. Members including France, Finland and Mexico, say they will end the use of coal before 2030. Ministers hope to have 50 countries signed up by the time of the next major UN conference in Poland next year.

A new alliance of 19 nations committed to quickly phasing out coal has been launched at the UN climate summit in Bonn, Germany. It was greeted as a “political watershed”, signalling the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that currently provides 40% of global electricity. New pledges were made on Thursday by Mexico, New Zealand, Denmark and Angola for the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which is led by the UK and Canada.

It’s a sunny October day on the outskirts of the west German town of Bottrop. A quiet, two-lane road leads me through farm pasture to a cluster of anonymous, low-lying buildings set among the trees. The highway hums in the distance. Looming above everything else is a green A-frame structure with four great pulley wheels to carry men and equipment into a mine shaft. It’s the only visible sign that, almost three quarters of a mile below, Germany’s last hard coal lies beneath this spot.

Twenty companies including Unilever and the Virgin Group announced on Tuesday that they will phase out usage of coal in order to combat climate change. The companies announced their decision at the One Planet Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Coming a month after the COP23 in Bonn, Germany, the announcement puts the companies in a position similar to the "Powering Past Coal Alliance," a partnership of 26 nations founded in Bonn by Britain, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Costa Rica and the Marshall Islands.

Nowhere in the EU is smog more suffocating than in southern Poland. This year, the polluted Polish mining city Katowice will host the COP24 climate conference. Ahead of that, change is in the air — and on the ground.

On the first day of autumn tens of thousands of Victorians received a welcome surprise from their power company — their electricity bills were going down. Prices were cut 5% because the retailer increased their investment in renewable energy. This will likely come as a surprise to many. Since the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, decided that bashing renewables would play well for them — perhaps more so in the party room than in the electorate — hardly a day goes by without claims that renewables have made our grid unreliable and have pushed prices sky high.

Coal will be increasingly squeezed out of the power generation market over the next three decades as the cost of renewables plunges and technology improves the flexibility of grids globally. That’s the conclusion of a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which estimated some $11.5 trillion of investment will go into electricity generation between now and 2050. Of that, 85 percent, or $9.8 billion, will go into wind, solar and other zero-emissions technologies such as hydro and nuclear, the London-based researcher said.

President Donald Trump criticized windmills as a source of energy at a New York fundraiser last week, saying they “kill so many birds,” amid escalating efforts by the Trump administration to revive the fading coal industry. On Monday, Trump boasted that coal was an “indestructible” form of energy and ridiculed windmills at a private fundraising event in Utica. “Coal is indestructible. You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills.

Japan's Marbeni will no longer build coal power plants. Just 1,600 more plants to go.

A major climate report will say coal-generated electricity must be phased out globally by 2050 if the world is to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, including the total destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. The report prepared by the United Nations body for climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, distils more than 6000 scientific references – including those from Australian researchers – and will outline the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

A West Virginia coal mine that employs about 400 workers is closing after a deal to sell it fell through. Gov. Jim Justice issued a statement saying the closing of the Pinnacle Mine in Wyoming County will displace a lot of miners. He says he is hopeful the mine "has not seen its last days."

China has some of the worst air pollution in the world. In several cities, thick layers of smog are common, resulting in thousands of deaths every year. According to a 2016 study, the top contributor of air pollution-related deaths in China is the burning of coal. The team of Chinese and American researchers behind the study said that pollution from coal caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013.

Coal, the fuel that powered the industrial age, has led the planet to the brink of catastrophic climate change. Scientists have repeatedly warned of its looming dangers, most recently on Friday, when a major scientific report issued by 13 United States government agencies warned that the damage from climate change could knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end if significant steps aren’t taken to rein in warming.

Inflation dictates that the cost of living will continue to rise — except, it seems, when it comes to renewable energy. The cost of building a new utility-scale solar or wind farm has now dropped below the cost of operating an existing coal plant, according to an analysis by the investment bank Lazard. Accounting for government tax credits and other energy incentives would bring the cost even lower.

Reuters investigates how a U.S. ‘clean coal’ program that costs taxpayers a billion dollars annually regularly fails to deliver on its environmental promises.

Americans are consuming less coal in 2018 than at any time since Jimmy Carter’s presidency, a federal report said Tuesday, as cheap natural gas and other rival sources of energy frustrate the Trump administration’s pledges to revive the U.S. coal industry. A report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected Tuesday that 2018 would see the lowest U.S. coal consumption since 1979, as well as the second-greatest number on record of coal-fired power plants shutting down.