How the coal industry curls up and dies, the manner of its bankruptcy and its death throes, will have quite a bearing on the fate of renewables over the coming few years. One issue is that as coal has less demand, it becomes cheaper, as a basic rule of supply and demand – another effect is that everyone tries to dig out the very last bit of coal reserves, to establish “energy security” at home. Now there is evidence that both China and India are doing this, opening up their own reserves, and burning them up on the current generation of coal plants, because they know there will be no more once these are closed. The knock on effect on…