Key takeaways:
- President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at bolstering the U.S. domestic coal industry.
- Among these efforts are boosting the mining of coal, using it more for the generation of electricity, and increasing exports.
- Many of Trump’s orders involve unraveling the priorities of former President Joe Biden regarding fossil fuels.
- Trump is realigning the priorities of federal energy agencies to promote more usage of coal, drawing fire from environmental groups.
President Donald Trump is set on revitalizing the nation’s coal industry, issuing a series of executive orders to stimulate coal mining, increase coal exports, and encourage usage of the resource to power artificial intelligence, and other sources of rising demand for electricity.
Among the efforts is Trump’s April 8 executive order dubbed “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241,” which strives to accelerate coal mining on federal lands and undertake other actions to bolster the industry. The actions drew fire from environmental groups such as the Sierra Club.
“It is the policy of the United States that coal is essential to our national and economic security,” the White House said on its website when announcing the order. “It is a national priority to support the domestic coal industry by removing Federal regulatory barriers that undermine coal production, encouraging the utilization of coal to meet growing domestic energy demands, increasing American coal exports, and ensuring that Federal policy does not discriminate against coal production or coal-fired electricity generation.”
The order directs the chair of Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, to designate coal as a mineral that entitles it to the benefits of a separate executive order under Trump that is intended to increase mineral production.
The order also directs Interior Secretary Burgum, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and Secretary of Energy Lee Zeldin to submit a joint report to the president that identifies coal resources on federal lands, assesses impediments to mining coal, and proposes policies to address those impediments. The Energy Secretary was also directed to analyze the impact that the availability of that coal could have on electricity costs and grid reliability.
The order says the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Energy, and other officials involved with financing energy projects should review “their charters, regulations, guidance, policies, international agreements, analytical models and internal bureaucratic processes” to ensure they don’t discourage financing of coal mining and use of coal in electricity generation projects.
The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, and other officials are also to take all actions necessary to identify and promote opportunities for coal and coal technologies, as well as facilitate international offtake agreements for United States coal.
Other directives in the order are expanding the usage of categorical exclusions that could further the production and export of coal; exploring whether coal used in the production of steel meets the definition of a “critical material” under the Energy Act of 2020, and if so, placing it on the critical materials list.
In the area of powering artificial intelligence data centers, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Energy are to identify regions where coal-powered infrastructure is available and suitable for powering data centers and high-performance computing operations and submit a report to the NEDC.
Trump’s order, following his public pronouncements that clean-coal technology should be developed, directs the Secretary of Energy to accelerate the development of such technologies “including technologies that utilize coal and coal byproducts such as building materials, battery materials, carbon fiber, synthetic graphite, and printing materials, as well as updating coal feedstock for power generation and steelmaking.”
Trump in another April 8 executive order, “Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources to Promote American Energy,” granted nearly 70 coal-fired power plants an extension to comply with regulations restricting emissions of chemicals such as mercury, arsenic, and benzene.
Under Trump, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had previously signaled it would grant the two-year exemptions to the Mercury and Air Toxic Standard (MATS), a Biden-era regulation that drew lawsuits from 23 states. Compliance with the rule would cost the coal industry about $790 million in the decade beginning in 2028, including at least $92 million for the power sector, according to EPA.
“President Trump is delivering on the mandate Americans gave him last November by empowering different forms of domestic energy to drive down costs, increase domestic energy supply, and improve our grid security as we pioneer the path to become the Artificial Intelligence capital of the world,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a written statement.
The current MATS rule has caused “significant regulatory uncertainty,” especially for coal plants in Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming, EPA said.
The Sierra Club environmental group reacted to the MATS order by Trump, saying: “By rolling back the most recent update to those protections, the administration is senselessly prioritizing outdated, polluting energy sources over the well-being of American communities—maybe your community. The exempted power plants and coal-burning units are in every region of the country—from Arizona to Pennsylvania, Wyoming to Alabama, from the Dakotas down to Texas, and in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and throughout the Midwest.”
Other actions under consideration by EPA include:
- Reconsideration of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Clean Power 2.0 regulations for power plants, which were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2022.
- Revising Biden’s PM2.5 National Ambient Air Quality Standards regarding particulate emissions, with EPA saying it is a major obstacle to permitting new energy projects.
- Reconsidering implementation of the Clean Air Act’s Regional Haze Program, which EPA said “has imposed significant costs on power plants and other sectors, calling into question the supply of affordable energy for American families.”
- Advancing cooperative federalism and encouraging states to pursue oversight and permitting of coal ash within their borders.
- Reviewing whether to extend compliance deadlines for the Legacy-Coal Combustion Residuals Management Units rule.
- Rescinding EPA’s Guidance on the Preparation of Clean Air Act Section 179B, Demonstrations for Nonattainment Areas Affected by International Transport of Emissions, which EPA said, “made it unnecessarily difficult for states to demonstrate that foreign air pollution is harming Americans within their borders.”
- EPA granted the Salt River Project’s Coronado Generating Station’s application for an extension of the deadline to meet requirements under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act regulations for the management of coal ash.
In response to Trump’s declaration of a “National Energy Emergency,” Interior Secretary Burgum implemented emergency permitting for a list of domestic energy resources, including coal. Other resources include crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, uranium, biofuels, geothermal, kinetic hydropower, and critical minerals.
“These measures are designed to expedite the review and approval, if appropriate, of projects related to the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, or generation of energy within the United States,” a release from the Department of the Interior said.
The effort will reduce permitting from a multi-year process to a maximum of 28 days, according to the White House. Current delays in approvals of energy projects pose risks to the nation’s economic stability, national security, and foreign policy interests, it said. The efficiencies will use existing regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.
Under the National Environmental Policy Act, projects requiring an environmental assessment that normally take up to one year will be reviewed in about 14 days, according to the agency, while projects that require a full environmental impact statement will see timelines reduced from about two years to 28 days.
An expedited consultation process under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act will allow the energy-related bureaus to notify the Fish and Wildlife Service that they are using emergency procedures, and the decision whether to proceed will be left with the bureaus. Bureaus will also follow alternative procedures under the National Historic Preservation Act.
Sources used in this article:
—
All views expressed by the author are solely the author’s current views and do not reflect the views of Concentric Energy Advisors, Inc., its affiliates, subsidiaries, related companies, or clients. The author’s views are based upon information the author considers reliable at the time of publication. However, neither Concentric Energy Advisors, Inc., nor its affiliates, subsidiaries, and related companies warrant the information’s completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such.
