Let the power engineers decide if coal is still needed or not. Not ignorant environmental activists.
The engineers don't say whether coal is needed.
The engineers figure out what power is needed.
The rest is policy and economics, and coal is a loser both ways. Even the Trump administration, loaded with coal people, tried to prop up coal and failed miserably.
Obviously coal isn't needed.
Natural gas generation can do everything coal can do faster, cheaper, cleaner, and more efficiently.
That's large majority of how coal had already dropped from 48% of generation in 2008 to 23% in 2019, and the trend is continuing.
Now with renewables having become the cheapest source of new power, plus the large reductions in energy storage cost, the renewable share of that displacement is going to increase. That's not a good thing because it will replace coal, but because it's replacing natural gas replacing coal.