Coal has been displaced by cheap and plentiful natural gas and the rapid growth of wind and solar energy — forces that President Trump will struggle to do away with.

President Trump last week issued executive orders designed to revive the use of coal in power plants, a practice that has been steadily declining for more than a decade.

But the effort is likely to fail, energy experts said, because the fossil fuel faces some critical hurdles. The power that coal plants produce typically can’t compete with cheaper, cleaner alternatives. And many plants that burn coal are simply too old and would need extensive and expensive upgrades to continue running.

“It will be very difficult to reverse this trend,” said Dan Reicher, an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration and a former climate and energy director at Google. “There are a variety of forces at work that don’t paint a very bright

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