President Donald Trump Monday posted an blunt and enthusiastic statement of his support for building more coal-fired power plants. 

“After years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants, I am authorizing my Administration to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL,” the president said in a post on Truth Social. 

The president didn’t offer any details on the authorization itself, but it follows more concrete actions that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is taking to review regulatory rules and end what Zeldin called the Biden administration’s “Green New Scam.” 

Many of these rules being reconsidered under the Trump administration are those that have impacted coal-fired power plants, including Biden’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, particulate matter standards, Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the endangerment finding, and the “Good Neighbor Plan.” Likewise, Trump’s day-one executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” included coal in the energy types the order was supporting. 

“We see such an incredible opportunity for the industry, and that’s what we had hoped with the change in administration,” Emily Arthun, chief executive of the American Coal Council, told Just the News. 

The industry's decline, from Obama to Biden

The use of coal for electricity generation in the U.S. has been on the decline since it peaked out at 1,847 terawatt hours produced in 2010 — enough to power more than 171 million households. Prior to announcing his candidacy in February 2008, Barack Obama, then an Illinois U.S. senator, spoke of his opposition to America’s coal industry.  

“So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted,” Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008. By the end of Obama’s second term in 2016, total U.S. electricity generation from coal was down to 1,239 terawatt hours. 

The decline continued through the first Trump administration. At the time, advancements in drilling and well completion technologies, also called fracking, unleashed cheap natural gas onto the American market. This allowed gas to be competitive and displace a lot of electricity generation from coal. 

Throughout his presidency, former President Joe Biden continued to wage war on the coal industry, and in his last days he halted new leases in the coal-producing region of the Powder River Basin, which straddles northeast Wyoming and part of Montana. 

Last year, electrical generation from coal produced 675 terawatt hours — enough to power 62.5 million homes. In 2022, Wyoming produced 41.2% of the nation’s coal, virtually all of which is the type of coal used in electricity production. For a state whose economy is heavily dependent on coal, the Trump administration’s support is welcome. 

“We're optimistic. We're seeing some moves out in Washington, D.C., at the regulatory level and at the congressional level to try to get back to a little common sense. And it's great that the president of the United States is actually working for us instead of actively working against us,” Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, told Just the News. 

Stressed electrical grid

The Biden administration had hoped that wind and solar would just replace power from coal — and later power from natural gas. In 2023, wind and solar produced 663.35 terawatt hours of electricity, up from nearly 96 terawatt hours in 2010. 

Homes consume power at different rates at different times of the day, so it’s difficult to say how many homes any amount of electricity from intermittent wind and solar would power, since it would depend on what time of day the power was delivered. Ultimately, without some form of backup, wind and solar can’t fully supply power to homes. Baseload power producing 663.35 terawatt hours of electricity would power nearly 62 million homes. 

Since wind and solar are intermittent, they also don’t provide adequate replacement for retired coal-fired power. As the grid became more loaded with intermittent sources while coal plants retired over the past several years, annual reports from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the continent’s grid watchdog, began to show increasing risks of blackouts during periods of high demand, which are typically periods of inclement weather. 

Electricity demand in the United States has been essentially flat for the past 20 years, which helped mitigate the problem, but that’s expected to change as the demands of A.I. and electric vehicles place more loads on the grid. The American Coal Council's Arthun said the Trump administration’s actions to support coal is not just good for the industry. It’s good for energy consumers. 

“Our grids are stressed with the retirements of the coal fleet — the ones that have retired and the pending retirements. We knew that the grid was at a critical state, and now we have the administration coming in and saying, ‘Whoa, we need to stop and look at this. Our coal baseload power needs to be there,” Arthun said. 

Economic impact

Biden’s Clean Power Plan would have not only forced more retirements of coal-fired power plants, but it would have also discouraged the building of natural-gas fired power plants. Analyses showed that blackouts and rising energy costs were likely outcomes in the near future if the rule remained in force. 

While the U.S. was retiring coal plants to bring down greenhouse gas emissions, China built more coal-fired capacity than the U.S. retired, and this effectively offset any reductions in emissions the U.S. accomplished. Rising electricity prices can harm industries and drag down economies. That’s happening in Europe where climate policies were pursued much more aggressively than here in the U.S.

Arthun said that Trump is setting the U.S. on a course that will prevent the country from being further disadvantaged economically by the retirement of coal plants. This is not just good for the coal industry, she said, it’s good for the nation. 

“We need to win the race in AI. We cannot allow that to go to China. But if we don't have the power to do that, then we can’t compete,” Arthun said. “This is protecting the country fundamentally, and the well being of our citizens and our economy.”