If you are an average citizen, you will have heard and likely debated climate change. It is coming, can we use less fossil fuels in terms of cutting costs. If you have bought a new or newer vehicle that your older one, your gasoline mileage increased for the auto makers have to have increasing fleet mileage every year. In other words, you took some steps toward saving some fuel consumption. That is a good thing for you and the planet, if you have children or grandchildren, they thanked you for your continuing efforts. In the last 15 years, one of the fossil fuel which has been under the greatest potential to change is coal. There are coal deposits and for generations the coal was used to generate electricity, The problem with coal is the byproduct of using it is the fumes go up into the atmosphere and even though the scrubbers in the smoke stack removes some particulars, the smoke is not clean. Another problem for the coal companies was the alternatives such as solar came down in price and electrical utilities switched to less expensive alternatives of natural gas and solar.

In an article by Sibi Arasu of the Associated Press, despite coal being the biggest source of planet-warming gases, the coal fleet grew by 19.5 gigawatts in 2022. New coal plants were added in 14 countries with China leading the way. The other countries were India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe according to the Global Energy Monitor, a organization that tracks a variety of energy projects around the globe.

There are 2,500 coal plants around the world, coal accounts for about one third of the total amount of energy installation globally.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as an investor one of the elements you pay attention to is the infrastructure of the industry. Some industries have more flexible infrastructure and technically it can and is being done anywhere where the people are. Other industries have built out infrastructure which means that it will take longer to disrupt the industry. For example, in terms of building a ship, there are only a few shipyards which can do the job. The issue is always how good are they receiving new contracts to build more ships. When you are investing look at the infrastructure that has to be disrupted before the company does not make profits.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.