Utilities across the USA are building dozens of old-style coal plants that will cement the industry’s standing as the largest industrial source of climate-changing gases for years to come. The expansion, the industry’s largest in two decades, represents an acknowledgment that highly touted “clean coal” technology is still a long ways from becoming a reality and underscores a renewed confidence among utilities that proposals to regulate carbon emissions will fail.—For all the talk of electricity produced by windmills and solar arrays, the U.S. Department of Energy has seen the future of electric power generation and it’s coal.