AP FACT CHECK: Trump wrongly says nation is short of coal

DENVER (AP) — Asked Tuesday about the price of gasoline and how regulation may affect the price of electricity, Donald Trump stood up for American's fossil fuel industry — coal in particular.

[...] the Republican nominee incorrectly blamed the coal industry's woes solely on new federal regulations, leaving out the effects of cheap natural gas.

TRUMP: "The federal government has made it so hard for natural gas producers, coal producers that they're driving them out of business."

[...] advances in extraction driven by hydraulic fracturing has led so many energy companies to pull so much natural gas out of the ground that they have flooded the market, depressing the price of natural gas and making it harder for those companies to turn a profit.

In May 2016, the last month for which data is available from the Energy Information Administration, the use of natural gas to make electricity increased from the previous year in every part of the country, save the western U.S. There, warm spring temperatures led to snowmelt that boosted hydroelectric power generation.

Obama last year required coal-fired plants to cut their carbon emissions and earlier this year placed a moratorium on sales of federal coal reserves.

The reason? A slight decline in the projected use of natural gas for electricity generation and a slight increase in the projected use of coal.

[...] the cost of electricity is falling — down about 2 percent over the past year, according to the Energy Information Administration — due largely to the cheapest price for natural gas prices in decades.