Inside Climate News reports:

Murray Energy, the U.S. coal company whose founder’s “wish list” was a virtual template for the Trump administration’s rollback of federal environmental and climate regulations, filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday.

It’s the latest in a wave of bankruptcy filings by coal companies that are struggling to compete in a market where their product—once the lowest-cost fuel for producing electricity—is now more expensive than natural gas and renewable sources.

Among them, Murray’s bankruptcy stands out, in part, because of its founder Robert Murray’s political fundraising for President Donald Trump and personal lobbying for rollbacks of key federal regulations in an effort to prop up the failing coal industry.

“It’s fair to say that Murray has been the last coal optimist in the country,” said Sandy Buchanan, the Cleveland-based executive director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEFFA), a nonprofit clean-energy research group. “He’s devoted his life to this industry and tried to make it work in one way or another. That company declaring bankruptcy is very significant.” [Continue reading…]