As coal burns out, the race for natural gas is on

Appalachian coal country may have helped President Trump win the Oval Office, but it's not clear whether coal will have much to do with winning the future of the region.

Economic developers in the region are instead betting on natural gas as the primary driver of the energy economy in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Even former regional coal companies, such as Consol Energy, have sold off their mining assets to focus on natural gas, as the trend toward fracked natural gas doesn't appear to be wavering.

"Consol is actually a good example of the shift away from coal to natural gas," said Laura Fisher, senior vice president of workforce development for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a large business development group focused on the economic longevity of the region that has everything to do with fracking and little to do with mining.

The company celebrated its 150th anniversary last year, said Fisher, noting that until very recently it had been a coal company since its inception. "It is now a majority natural gas company. It still has some coal assets, but most of them have been sold," she said.