Public Utilities Fortnightly now forecasts that the U.S. grid’s coal plants will generate under a billion megawatt-hours this year. That would be big news in itself. But our forecast is that coal plant generation will fall further, below nine-tenths of a billion megawatt-hours.

Not since the late nineteen-seventies have coal plants produced so little power in the U.S. in a year. Which is extra remarkable because the U.S. grid’s overall production of power — from all generation sources — is now about twice what it was in the late nineteen-seventies.

Talking about 1898, Samuel Insull’s historic speech, “Public Control and Private Operation,” took place on the seventh of June of that year, in Insull’s adopted town of Chicago. Here are his key words that day, that built the foundation for the regulated utility industry:

“Acute competition necessarily frightens the investor, and compels corporations to pay a very high price for capital…