We have a lot of stations running very infrequently and other on biofuels like woodchips that can be re-set to burn coal or coal dust quite easily. And some oil fired generating plants and larger marine diesel engines can also burn coal dust as well, so long as you do not mind re-jetting quite frequently. And the soot ...
But if we ever get to there being a real war on, there are several tricks with coal we can pull if we absolutely have to. (including real nasties like setting fire to coal underground in spent workings where it is too fragmented to mine, and starving it of air so you collect a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, essentially the old town gas that can be burnt in to raise steam for turbines at the surface. en.wikipedia.org/.../Underground_coal_gasification )
Rather hoping we do not need to do so, but the knowledge and recipe book for 101 things to do with coal is 'out there' .
Also at an individual level, I suspect that a lot of folk will be looking at their new electricity tarrifs coming out about now and those in the right sort of house will be muttering and reconsider that now solar pays back in less than 5 years, instead of more than ten a year or so ago, it is now worth doing, so there may be some more permanent demand reductions coming soon.
