Coal is a dirty word, no matter how cleanly it is burned, eco groups have successfully programmed the public to believe that coal is automatically dirty---just do a public opinion survey. In the Pacific Northwest, Canadian natural gas is the current power plant fuel of choice, and the resulting increased demand for natural gas has caused the natural gas rates to skyrocket creating a full circle effect because the cost of generation of power goes up with the increases in natural gas rates and so electrical rates go up too. 85% of the natural gas burned west of the Rocky Mountains comes from Canada, so we are exporting American dollars too.
Another good example is Washington State University which, under a legislative mandate, converted from clean coal from Utah, burned in a scrubber equipped boiler, to Canadian natural gas (exporting tax dollars) and resulted in the state buying the rail lines that used to carry the coal (lines became unprofitable due to lost coal traffic and one of the reasons the state bought the lines is because it didn't want the bad press associated with the power plant conversion), further, according to a recent state audit, it now costs 9.3 times more to heat the campus as it did with coal. On another note, BNSF is currently being sued by and enviromental group for not doing more to control coal dust that blows off loaded rail cars, the group claims the fine particulates contaminate air and the dust might contain substances that are harmful to ground water. I see coal traffic starting to decline in about 5 years due to all the current pressures which I expect to increase in the future. Remember, the only possible cause to global warming is humans (never mind other planets in our solar system are experiencing similar increases as well and humans aren't on those planets yet.)