For decades, Western Pennsylvania and much of the nation's coal industry saw their fortunes twist in the wind, as mines shut down and younger workers skipped the industry for more stable, less risky jobs elsewhere. But that changed this decade, as economic growth and a push to lessen the country's reliance on foreign sources of energy made coal king again.

	David J. Phillip, Associated Press file photo A pile of coal is shown at the TXU Corp's Big Brown power plant in this file photo near Fairfield, Texas. Click photo for larger image.

But just as the industry appears poised for a new round of prosperity, with more than 150 new coal-fired plants on the drawing board and industry plans to hire thousands of new miners, comes a move by one of the nation's largest energy company's to scale back its use of coal.

This week's proposed $32 billion buyout of Dallas-based utility giant TXU came with a big win for environmentalists: The buyers, KKR and Texas Pacific Group, said they would not pursue plans to build eight of 11 coal-fired plants. But the deal, if it clears regulators, also came with a big worry sign for the coal industry.

Some observers believe it not only will deal a short-term blow to coal, but possibly could serve as a turning point that will lead other energy companies to pursue alternatives to coal, the source for more than half of this nation's electricity.

Share prices of coal companies, including Upper St. Clair-based Consol Energy, initially plunged on Monday's news, though they recovered somewhat with yesterday's rebound from Tuesday's massive, broad-based sell-off of stocks around the world.

Still, the question remains: Will the push to 'green' energy leave coal in the dust?

Jim Owen doesn't think so.

The spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an industry group whose membership includes 60 utility companies, said that while "coal-based generation would have some vulnerability in a carbon-constrained environment ... coal will continue to be the main workhorse of our generation mix."

One reason for that is that coal's chief competitor for electricity generation, nuclear power, has its own challenges that will not be easily resolved, beginning with the storage of radioactive nuclear waste.

Waste storage was a point of contention between President Bush and challenger John Kerry during the last presidential campaign, when Mr. Kerry famously promised that if elected, the Bush administration's plan to store nuclear waste in an underground facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., would be scuttled. Mr. Kerry lost that election, but the Democrats won the Senate last fall, making Senator Harry Reid of Nevada the majority leader. In that role, he has promised to kill the Yucca Mountain project.

Nuclear power fuels some 20 percent of the nation's electricity production; natural gas, 15 percent. Beyond those fuels, "alternative technologies have a long way to go to become competitive with either coal or nuclear energy," said Consol Vice President Tom Hoffman.

Still, some observers view the TXU deal as a watershed event.

On the day of the unveiling of the proposed buyout, which was done with input from environmental groups that only months before were protesting TXU's plans for more coal-fired plants, Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune called it "the beginning of the end of big coal's dominance over America's energy future."

On the same day, a leading scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration called for an end to building coal-fired power plants altogether. "There should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants," James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told journalists gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

While burning oil and natural gas also release carbon dioxide, Mr. Hansen said coal is the major culprit. "Until we have that clean coal power plant, we should not be building them. It is as clear as a bell."

Henry Lee, lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, offered a more moderate view. He said that he expects most coal plants built after 2012 to be equipped with technology for capturing and storing carbon emissions so that they will not pollute.

In the meantime, he said, "we have more coal than most of the countries in the world and we're not going to walk away from it."