Why cannot these coal-fire plants be converted to natural gas?? Seems to me that you should be able to re-make them either as straight nat. gas fired steam turbine plants, or stick a few gas turbines up front and turn’em into co-gen plants.
The eco-nazis have made upgrading coal plants impossible ... If you have an existing coal plant putting out 10 units of emissions a year to produce 1x megawatts and you want to upgrade any part of the plant and make 1.5x megawatts you now have to upgrade the entire plant to new standards of 4 units of emissions which cannot be met.