Trump Launches Last-ditch Crusade To Rescue Coal

President Donald Trump announced sweeping executive orders Tuesday that aim to achieve a goal that has long seemed implausible — bringing a national renaissance for coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

His actions, first reported Monday by POLITICO, include steps that would draw on emergency powers to reinvigorate a coal industry that has been struggling for decades because of tightening environmental regulations and competition from less expensive natural gas and renewables.

Even some coal supporters conceded that Trump’s orders are unlikely to reverse coal’s dramatic decline from its once-predominant role as a source of U.S. electricity. But they represent yet another 180-degree reversal from the priorities of the Biden administration, whose regulations were expected to shut down more coal plants in the U.S. and eventually phase out all greenhouse gas-emitting power plants.

If successful, Trump’s efforts could also add tons more planet-warming gases to the atmosphere, contrary to previous U.S.-led efforts to zero out climate pollution in the coming decades.

“We are bringing back an industry that was abandoned despite the fact it was just about the best in terms of power — real power,” Trump said in remarks at the White House, where he was joined by coal workers in hard hats. “We are ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful clean coal once and for all.”

The four executive orders Trump was set to sign were designed to eliminate what he sees as obstacles to ramping up coal energy production in the United States, including opening up public lands for coal leasing. He is also pushing for the fuel to be used to power the artificial intelligence data centers that are expected to be a major contributor to skyrocketing electricity demand in the coming years.

One order would also instruct Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who chairs the president’s Energy Dominance Council, to designate coal as a “mineral,” which would help boost production under Trump’s previous executive order aimed at rapidly approving permits for domestic mineral production. It also directs Interior and other relevant agencies to lift barriers from mining the resource to boost production, according to a fact sheet.

The executive orders build on regulatory actions the Trump administration has already taken to help reinvigorate the struggling industry. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has launched reviews of a suite of rules affecting coal plants, including a landmark climate regulation and other rules imposing stronger limits on air toxics, wastewater discharge and coal ash. The Trump administration also recently invited coal plants to apply for a special exemption from Trump from stronger Biden-era limits on emissions of mercury and other air toxics.

This isn’t the first time the president has tried to revive the struggling coal industry. During Trump’s first term, then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry proposed a rule that called for paying coal and nuclear plants to keep them running — an effort rejected by the Republican-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

But Trump can’t directly reverse the market dynamics driving the long-term decline of coal, including the higher costs of running less efficient coal plants compared with less expensive natural gas and renewable energy.

Rising mining costs, environmental regulation and competition from natural gas and renewables all contributed to coal production in 2023 declining to less than half of its 2008 production peak, the Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday.

“Under the first Trump administration coal capacity retired at a faster rate compared to any other administration,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, which has led a “Beyond Coal” campaign that the group says has helped retire nearly 100 coal plants. “Just as we did then, we will not back down from Trump and his dangerous and deadly plans.”

Trump’s actions will likely help keep the few existing coal plants open, but utilities have indicated for years they have no interest in building new plants using the fuel.

"The industry right now is kind of holding its own,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told POLITICO in a short interview Tuesday. “What [the executive order] will do is elongate the use of coal as a power source — to keep [up with] this insatiable need that we're going to have for energy."

One energy executive granted anonymity to speak candidly about the orders said they are unlikely to change the long-term outlook for the ailing fuel.

“The EO will likely help in the short term to ensure dispatchable resources are retained for some period of time, but long-term investment decisions on assets that last 40 years or more can’t realistically be made on the back of an EO that can simply be reversed in the next administration,” the executive said.

James Bikales contributed to this report.