Beyond Coal is an organisation that has been set up to close or retire old and dirty coal power plants around the US with the view of replacing them with cleaner sources of energy production. Bloomberg Philanthropies has teamed up with Sierra Club giving a further $30 million to the initiative.

In 2011, Michael Bloomberg – founder of global data company Bloomberg LP and 108th Major of New York City – gave $50 million to Beyond Coal and last week announced he would give a further $30 million.

So far the initiative has closed 188 coal fired plants with the view of retiring a further 335 around the US. The Clean Energy Task force believes that closing just one coal fired plant will prevent 146 asthma attacks, 47 heart attacks and 29 premature deaths each year. As a result, for every 50 gigawatts taken offline, the US saves $2.3 billion in related health care costs.

“Many of coal’s defenders refer to these efforts as a “war on coal” — without mentioning the actual death toll. Coal is still killing 7,500 people annually. That’s 7,500 too many, but it’s down from 13,000 just four years ago, when Bloomberg Philanthropies teamed up with the Sierra Club to set an ambitious goal: retiring one-third of the U.S. coal fleet by 2020,” said Mr Bloomberg.

According to the Sierra Club, dependence on coal has plunged from 52% of US electricity generation to under 40%; avoiding more than 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions from the electricity generation sector.

The Sierra Club is most likely the USA’s biggest and most powerful grassroots organisation with over 2.4 million members.

Many have invested in clean energy and retiring old coal fired plants because they can see the writing on the wall. Coal is a thing of the past and now we need to look to the future and leave a clean legacy for our children and theirs.