“And our answer was: We’re not going to build another coal plant.” (The governor confirmed the account,
but added in an email, “I’ll continue to encourage power companies to burn more coal to put our miners back to work.”)
It’s the same story in Virginia, where Dominion, a leading utility based in Richmond — near where commercial coal mining got
its start — designed a special rate to make it easier for Amazon Web Services and similar customers to buy renewable energy.
“They’re looking to attract, as in the Appalachian case, new customers, and those customers aren’t attracted by coal.”
Almost half of the Fortune 500 companies have adopted at least one climate or clean-energy goal, with 23 of them pledging eventually to run their businesses on 100 percent renewable energy, including Walmart, Bank of America
and Google, according to a recent report by the World Wildlife Fund and other environmentally minded organizations and investors.
Appalachian Power, the leading utility there, is quickly shifting toward natural gas
and renewable sources like wind and solar, even as President Trump calls for a coal renaissance.
And in Wyoming, the nation’s leading coal producer by far, Black Hills Energy worked with Microsoft to create a complex arrangement for the technology giant to get enough wind energy to fulfill current
and future needs at Microsoft’s data center in Cheyenne.
Last year, utilities made deals with corporate customers through rate arrangements known as green
tariffs for 220 megawatts of power, enough to run about 40,000 average American homes.
Though corporations are buying renewable energy across the country, energy executives and analysts say it is notable
that the trend is taking hold in states where coal production is part of the economic heart and soul.