North American coal transitions under conditions of evolutionary tension: Stakeholder priorities for regional diversification

Coal regions face an increasingly uncertain transition landscape as decarbonization priorities, policy volatility, and local fiscal dependencies converge. Rather than following a uniform path, regional transitions diverge along distinct structural and institutional axes. This paper advances a Multi-level Regional Transition Framework to situate how local stakeholders navigate evolutionary tension—forces of economic change and entrenched continuity. Combining Q-methodology and semi-structured interviews with 60 stakeholders across Eastern Pennsylvania, Southeastern British Columbia, and Southeastern Montana, we identify two predominant transition rationales: Environmental Orientation and Coal Utilization . Comparative findings show three distinct transition archetypes: Eastern Pennsylvania : Structural economic diversification supports gradual, post-coal industrial reconfiguration; Southern British Columbia : Stable decarbonization policy supports environmentally oriented diversification, moderated by a policy-export paradox associated with metallurgical coal; and Southeastern Montana: Substantial fiscal and social dependence on coal favors incremental adaptation centered on coal asset preservation. Based on these findings we argue that regional pathways are shaped by four interacting drivers: transition maturity, policy stability, economic buffering (including fiscal reliance), and socio-cultural/perceptual path dependency. We demonstrate that regions are not passive recipients of macro policy. Instead, unbuffered fiscal drag and local path dependencies can spur resistance that aggregates upward, creating recursive feedback loops which actively destabilize macro-level policy continuity. Consequently, durable transition strategies should look beyond targets and align decarbonization with local capabilities, fiscal realities and community agency.