Investors are taking fright. The market capitalisation of America’s four largest coal companies is now $1.2 billion, down from $22 billion in 2010. Restructuring looms. One big, lossmaking producer, Arch Coal, faces delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, after its share price fell to below $1—down by more than 80% in a year. Norway’s huge ($900 billion) sovereign-wealth fund is getting out of coal. Other investors, most recently Bank of America, are also categorising coal as too risky. Unlike shares in oil majors like ExxonMobil and Chevron, coal is not a must-hold stock for investors. Coal miners are mostly more thinly capitalised than other energy firms, and thus more vulnerable to divestment campaigns aimed at cutting off fossil-fuel producers’ access to capital markets.
Environmentalists rejoice at this. Coal mining squanders water, and burning the black stuff emits poisonous mercury plus lung-choking acids and soot. It is the most carbon-intensive type of fossil fuel.