Trump to sign executive order to help dying U.S. coal industry

Source: Washington Post, via MSN

Trump to sign executive order to help dying U.S. coal industry

Story by Maxine Joselow 28m 2 min read

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President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Tuesday aimed at boosting the struggling U.S. coal industry, according to White House officials. ... Flanked by coal miners wearing hard hats at the White House, Trump will direct federal agencies to loosen various restrictions on coal mining, leasing and exports. He will instruct the Interior Department to resume coal leasing on millions of acres of public lands, and he will order the Energy Department and other agencies to study whether more coal-fired power plants can supply electricity for artificial intelligence data centers.

These directives, however, are unlikely to usher in a coal renaissance. Domestic coal production has declined dramatically in recent years because of market forces that have driven down the price of natural gas and renewable energy -- the same market forces that are now raising the risk of a recession caused by Trump's tariff policies.

Trump on Tuesday will also task the newly created National Energy Dominance Council with designating coal as a mineral, a White House official said. This classification will allow coal to benefit from a prior executive order that directed agencies to fast-track the permitting process for new mines on federal lands, according to the official. ... "Today at 3PM, President Trump will sign an Executive Order to reinvigorate AFFORDABLE, RELIABLE, AND CLEAN COAL!" White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X on Tuesday. "Coal is critical to achieving American Energy and AI Dominance."

While the phrase “clean coal” is popular among Trump’s allies, coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel. It produces more planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions than natural gas when burned, and few companies are using the nascent technology that captures these emissions and stores them deep underground. ... Although Trump made coal central to his first campaign, a coal revival never materialized during his first term. A boom in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, flooded the market with cheap natural gas, while construction of new coal plants ground to a halt. ... U.S. coal output tumbled 26 percent from 2017 to 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign contends that 383 U.S. coal plants have closed down or proposed to retire. About 200 remain, with 175 generating significant electricity, according to the EIA.

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Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-to-sign-executive-order-to-help-dying-u-s-coal-industry/ar-AA1CwMom