It is necessary to find cost-effective ways to replace coal with renewables or to be able to use coal and lignite in a climate-friendly way (clean coal technologies, methanol economy, carbon capture, storage, and recycling) to make decarbonization not only an alternative for rich countries, but a truly global option.
Yep, expansion of coal is a failure on all levels all right.
More expensive than even natural gas, let alone solar, is only financially viable with government handouts, dumps more carbon into the air than any other mainstream type of energy, renewable or not, creates vast open ponds of radioactive fly ash, and since all mining has moved to new open pit low sulfur coal in the eighties it doesn’t even employ more than a handful of people.
Poor German Green-party. Either a willing participant, or what happens when you want to be an environmentalist, but also want to defend the status quo at all costs.