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

Trump signed four executive orders designed to eliminate what he sees as obstacles to ramping up coal energy production in the United States, including by opening up public lands for coal leasing. He is also pushing for the fuel to power the artificial intelligence data centers that are expected to contribute 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 to approve domestic mineral production permits rapidly. According to a fact sheet, the order also directs the Interior and other relevant agencies to lift barriers to mining the resource to boost production.

The executive orders build on the Trump administration’s regulatory actions 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 stronger Biden-era limits on mercury emissions and other air toxics.

This isn’t the president’s first attempt 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 coal’s long-term decline, 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 on 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 helped retire nearly 100 coal plants during Trump’s first term and 389 overall. “Just as we did then, we will not back down from Trump and his dangerous and deadly plans.”

One of the president’s executive orders directs the Energy secretary to keep power plants online that are needed to prevent an energy shortfall, to the extent possible under federal law, and authorizes emergency actions to prevent large power plants from shutting down if doing so would hurt system reliability.

Another Trump order directs the Energy Department to decide whether metallurgical coal is a “critical material” or “critical mineral” under the Energy Act of 2020 — designations that would open up funding for research of new technologies. The outlook for metallurgical coal used in blast furnace steelmaking is slightly better than that used in power plants—the U.S. exports most of its metallurgical coal, competing internationally with Australia, Russia, and Canada.

The Trump administration would also enlist the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office to support coal-powered electricity generation. In a series of X posts on Tuesday, the department said it would make $200 billion available under the office’s energy infrastructure reinvestment program. The program was created by the Inflation Reduction Act to support legacy energy infrastructure and provide “low-cost, long-term financing available to invest in energy infrastructure, including coal.”

The department also said it would reestablish the National Coal Council, which would include members representing coal producers, users, equipment suppliers, state and local officials, and other members of the coal value chain. Biden sought to reconfigure that effort, focusing on coal workers and communities.

Trump’s actions will likely help keep the few existing coal plants open, but utilities have indicated for years that 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, who requested anonymity to discuss the orders candidly, 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 a while, 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.

Coal plants are also significantly more expensive to operate than natural gas, wind, and solar facilities. Wind and solar surpassed coal-fired generation in the U.S. for the first time last year, and natural gas has been the country’s number one electricity fuel since 2018.

“The economics are pretty much impossible already, so adding in trade wars and tariffs would seem to make it even less likely that the Golden Age of coal is upon us,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a text message to POLITICO.

One utility and energy consultant, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the orders, questioned why the president remained focused on coal despite a clear market shift toward natural gas over the past decade.

“As much as I love coal, the chief reason it went away is not necessarily regulations. Natural gas and fracking are why coal went away,” the consultant said. “Texas put coal out of business.”

According to research from clean energy think tank Energy Innovation, the cost of coal relative to renewable energy resources has continued to rise over the past six years. Incentives from the Democrats’ climate law have helped spur this trend, and wind, solar, and storage are cheaper to run than 99 percent of all coal plants, according to the group. However, even before the IRA was passed in 2022, 72 percent of coal plants were more expensive to run than wind and solar.

Rob Gramlich, president of power grid consulting firm Grid Strategies and former economic adviser at FERC, said via email that the basic economics of coal plants will likely remain unchanged despite the president’s orders, and added that fossil fuel plants were already likely to stay on longer amid skyrocketing power demand.

“I don’t think this order changes the facts that coal-fired power plants are old, expensive to run, and unlikely to operate very often or for many more years,” Gramlich said. “The plants will likely be kept online longer than believed a few years ago due to an uptick in power demand. But that is unrelated to this order, and doesn’t mean the plants will operate outside of peak periods to maintain reliability.”

However, some Republicans backed Trump’s orders, arguing that the U.S. must continue developing coal to keep pace with China in the race to power data centers and artificial intelligence.

“For years, Democrats have held coal captive with reckless regulations, making it harder for us to use American energy and making us more dependent on foreign sources of energy,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), whose home state is the nation’s top coal producer, said on the Senate floor Tuesday while holding a large chunk of coal. “President Trump is cutting red tape so we can compete again. Clean coal is a fuel for the future. It’s affordable, it’s reliable, ready to go.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/08/trump-launches-last-ditch-crusade-to-rescue-coal-00279245