Europe's Bright Coal-Fired Future

Wait.  What?

Yup.  Coal.

European utilities are poised to add more coal-fired power capacity than natural gas in the next four years, boosting emissions just as the era of free carbon permits ends.

Power producers from EON AG to RWE AG (RWE) will open six times more coal-burning plants than gas-fed units by 2015, UBS AG said in a Sept. 5 research note. Profits at coal-fired power stations may more than double by then, according to a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. report published on Sept. 13.

and

“The economics for coal are near the best we’ve seen in five years,” Laurent Segalen, a director at ECMF, said yesterday in an interview from London. Buying UN credits for 2013, after they plunged almost 80 percent in the past year, is “an amazing bargain,” he said. 

...

Utilities will add as much as 10,600 megawatts of new coal plants in seven central European countries in the next four years, compared with 1,600 megawatts of new natural-gas capacity .

They're shutting down their nukes and they won't frack, so coal is really all that's left.  There's wind and solar of course, but even the Euros aren't that suicidal - they wouldn't be crazy enough to handicap their economic competitiveness with those fantasies.  Just enough wind and solar to feel superior to everyone else, but no more.  Maybe Mitt Romney should be telling those coal miners in OH, WV and PA that he'd be thrilled to see them mine all the coal the Euros can burn.