There isn't much additional profit in the selling of additional electrons to consumers for a number of reasons, not limited to the fact that electric utilities are regulated monopolies, and widespread decoupling[1] of utility rates which incentivizes utilities to get customers to save electricity.
The profit to be made is in the building of the generation capacity itself. The problem with this is that coal plants and traditional nuclear plants are very expensive to build compared to natural gas plants and renewables like wind and solar.
After being built, they are very expensive to fuel and maintain compared to renewables.
So utilities are more likely to choose natural gas or renewables for new generation capacity. It's not that the coal industry hasn't tried to convince people that they are the fuel of the future (i.e. the "Clean Coal" marketing effort), but the costs just don't line up in coal's favor, and that's not even considering the cost of the currently unaccounted externalities of coal burning.
That's why I said "coal and nuclear industries" rather than electric utilities. Even if the generators aren't making money from increased output someone still needs to mine the minerals that power those plants. While I agree that those technologies are not viable in the long term, in the short term their interests (staying in business a few more years) align with the long term interests of the environmentalists (who want to decouple transportation from fossil fuels which is impossible with ICEs).
The profit to be made is in the building of the generation capacity itself. The problem with this is that coal plants and traditional nuclear plants are very expensive to build compared to natural gas plants and renewables like wind and solar.
After being built, they are very expensive to fuel and maintain compared to renewables.
So utilities are more likely to choose natural gas or renewables for new generation capacity. It's not that the coal industry hasn't tried to convince people that they are the fuel of the future (i.e. the "Clean Coal" marketing effort), but the costs just don't line up in coal's favor, and that's not even considering the cost of the currently unaccounted externalities of coal burning.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoupling_(utility_regulation...