While the impact of the shale gas revolution was the biggest driver of the decline of the coal industry in West Virginia, the increasing cost competitiveness of renewable generating sources – primarily solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind – also played a role, albeit a much smaller one, in West Virginia than on the national stage. The April 2017 study by the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy1 found that growth in renewable energy across the United States was responsible for about 18 percent of the decline in domestic coal production between 2011 and 2017, a distant third to the role of natural gas (49 percent) and lower than expected demand for electricity (26 percent).