The shine is coming off once bright prospects for natural gas as the future fossil fuel of choice in Asia as power companies in India and Southeast Asia tap abundant and cheap domestic coal resources to generate electricity. In Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards. “Coal is still the cheapest and the fuel that most Asian countries will use,” said Loreta G. Ayson, undersecretary at the Philippine Department of Energy. --Florence Tan and Henning Gloystein, Reuters, 3 November 2015
