Even though there are abundant sources of coal, there hasn't been a new coal-fired power plant built in the United States in the past two years.  The current demands are still there as coal is still needed for half of the electrical generating plants in the US.  But if the price of natural gas stays cheap in respect to the cost of coal, the companies that own the power plants will continue to convert the current stock of power plants to natural gas from coal.

"Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them...And the economics to make it clean don't work."

Now coal isn't dead just yet as they have a lot of influence in the politics of energy supply in the United States.  But that is waning.  The EPA is starting to fight the production of greenhouse gases by regulating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each year, especially for the large emitters like coal-fired power plants.  As coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, there will continue to be pressure politically to either shut down the coal plants or to convert them over to cleaner fuels like natural gas.  it is still currently cheaper to reduce the demand for electricity and shut down the plants than to continue to need the plants running on whatever fuel they might use.