Trump Wants to Reverse Coal’s Long Decline. It Won’t be Easy.

President Trump final week issued government orders designed to revive the use of coal in power plants, a follow that has been steadily declining for greater than a decade.
However the effort is more likely to fail, vitality consultants stated, as a result of the fossil gas faces some vital hurdles. The facility that coal vegetation produce usually can’t compete with cheaper, cleaner options. And lots of vegetation that burn coal are just too previous and would want in depth and costly upgrades to proceed working.
“It will likely be very tough to reverse this development,” stated Dan Reicher, an assistant vitality secretary within the Clinton administration and a former local weather and vitality director at Google. “There are a selection of forces at work that don’t paint a really vibrant future for coal.”
Why has coal use declined?
As soon as the first supply of electrical energy in the US, coal vegetation now produce simply 17 p.c of the nation’s energy. The primary purpose is that pure fuel, one other fossil gas, grew to become plentiful and low-cost due to the shale fracking growth that started within the early 2000s. Use of renewable vitality sources, like wind and photo voltaic, has additionally grown quite a bit.
Pure fuel now offers about 38 p.c of U.S. electrical energy, in accordance with the Vitality Data Administration. Renewable vitality applied sciences equivalent to photo voltaic, wind and hydroelectric energy produce about 25 p.c, and nuclear vitality generates about 20 p.c.
Some areas, like New England, are scheduled to close down their final coal energy vegetation quickly. Essentially the most populous state within the nation, California, makes use of just about no coal for electrical energy era.
Coal has additionally been below stress as a result of burning it releases greenhouses gases accountable for local weather change and pollution that hurt individuals and nature. To get round these considerations, Mr. Trump stated, he will waive certain air-pollution restrictions for dozens of coal vegetation.
The place is coal nonetheless used?
Within the Southeast and the Midwest, many utilities proceed to generate electrical energy from coal vegetation. Corporations equivalent to Alabama Energy, Georgia Energy, Duke Vitality and the Tennessee Valley Authority — the nation’s largest government-run energy supplier — are among the many largest customers of coal.
States which have an extended historical past of coal mining are nonetheless very reliant on the gas. They embody West Virginia, which bought 85 p.c of its electrical energy from coal final yr, and Kentucky, which bought 67 p.c, in accordance with the Vitality Data Administration.
Mr. Trump has directed the Vitality Division to use emergency powers to maintain unprofitable coal vegetation working. The president stated this was crucial to forestall energy outages. He tried a similar strategy throughout his first time period.
He has additionally issued orders to repeal any regulations that “discriminate” in opposition to coal manufacturing, to open new federal lands for coal mining and to discover whether or not coal-burning energy vegetation can serve information facilities used for synthetic intelligence providers like chatbots.
Peabody, the biggest coal producer in the US, stated the world used extra coal in 2024 than in every other yr in historical past, a undeniable fact that it stated highlighted the necessity for the useful resource to assist increasing vitality calls for.
“To assist our nation’s rising wants for inexpensive, dependable vitality, we imagine the U.S. ought to halt coal plant retirements, use current vegetation at larger utilization and restart shuttered coal vegetation,” Vic Svec, a spokesman for Peabody, stated.
Can the Trump administration revive coal?
Whereas federal insurance policies can play a job, utilities and the state lawmakers and regulators that oversee them finally decide how a lot coal is burned in energy vegetation.
The Edison Electrical Institute, or E.E.I., a utility commerce affiliation, stated in an announcement that it agreed with the administration that the US wanted extra sources of electrical energy, but it surely declined to talk for or in opposition to using coal.
“Demand for electrical energy is rising on the quickest tempo in a long time, and E.E.I.’s member electrical corporations are utilizing a various, home and balanced vitality combine to satisfy this demand whereas maintaining buyer payments as little as attainable,” the institute stated.
Some giant utilities, like Xcel Vitality, have been changing coal vegetation to photo voltaic farms, partly to make the most of federal incentives created through the Biden administration. For instance, in Becker, Minn., Xcel has been constructing a big photo voltaic and battery set up to switch its Sherco coal power plant. The corporate is changing one other coal plant, in Colorado, to pure fuel.
An Xcel spokesman, Theo Keith, stated that the utility was reviewing Mr. Trump’s orders “to know whether or not they might affect our operations,” however that within the meantime, it will work to supply clear vitality at low price to its shoppers.
Conservative lawmakers in some states, like Texas, have proposed laws to require higher use of fossil fuels to make sure satisfactory energy provide and to satisfy rising demand from information facilities, electrical automobiles and warmth pumps. However vitality analysts anticipate that, if handed, such measures would primarily profit pure fuel, not coal.
Environmental activists stated efforts to revive coal had been misguided. They level out that states that use extra coal are inclined to have larger electrical energy payments, extra well being issues and higher danger of energy plant failures due to getting old gear.
“We’re actually reversing a long time of labor right here,” stated Holly Bender, chief program officer on the Sierra Membership, which has run a marketing campaign referred to as Past Coal to finish using that gas. “It’s apparent that Trump is attempting to place his finger on the dimensions to maintain coal open. However these are items of infrastructure which can be on the finish of their helpful life.”