While coal production and use dropped significantly in America, in Europe "we have some kind of golden age of coal," says Anne Sophie Corbeau of the International Energy Agency. The amount of electricity     1    from coal is rising at an annual     2    of 50% in some European countries. Since coal is the     3    polluting source of electricity, with more greenhouse gas produced per KWH (千瓦时) than any other fossil fuel, this is     4    to European environmental aspirations.     5    did it happen?
    As American utilities     6    into gas, American coal miners had to     7    for new markets. This happened when slowing Chinese demand was pushing down world coal prices, which make European utilities     8    buyers. Compared with the rock-bottom price of gas in America, coal is not     9    that cheap. But it is a     10    compared with the gas price in Europe.     11    gas can be carted around in liquid form, that is expensive and the infrastructure required is still patchy; for the most part, gas is shifted through pipelines, and tends to be used     12    to where it originates. So     13    coal has world- market prices, gas has regional prices, often     14    in one way or another to the oil price. Many European gas contracts were     15    years ago with the Russian gas giant, Gazprom, and gas prices have     16    high. Gazprom has said it will cut prices, but that may make little difference.
    So coal is cheaper than gas in Europe and is     17    to remain so, partly because Europe's domestic gas industry is many years     18    America's and partly because it will take time for Europe to build an infrastructure to import     19    natural gas in large amounts. Power utilities in Germany were set,     20    , to lose [*]11.70 when they burned gas to make a MW (兆瓦特) of electricity, but to earn [*]14.22 per MW when they burned coal.