Ian Lange, who teaches energy economics at the Colorado School of Mines, said that if he were running a coal mine, he’d ask one thing of his customers: “Show me, you know, give me a commitment.”

That’s the case in Europe too, despite the current surge in demand as it moves off Russian coal, according to Ian Lange, who directs the mineral and energy economics program at the Colorado School of Mines.

Morgan Bazilian, who heads up the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, said, “I don’t know if that has any precedent at all.”

Natural gas requires pipelines or special import terminals to move around the world. Coal, on the other hand, does not, noted Ian Lange, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

Morgan Bazilian teaches public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. “When you look around and you do a bid for who’s going to build your plant, up till two months ago, the Russian plants were a very attractive option,” Bazilian said.

EU officials had hoped to persuade Russia to clean things up. But Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, said now that’s taking a back seat.

If these high coal prices last even a little bit longer, though, private equity firms might come calling, according to Ian Lange, director of the mineral energy economics program at the Colorado School of Mines.

Coal producers in the U.S. would like to take advantage of these high prices, but the infrastructure is just not there, according to Ian Lange, an economist at the Colorado School of Mines.

But at the Colorado School of Mines, policy professor Morgan Bazilian said unless rules have teeth and bring about change in the industry, hackers will return.