Trump aims to reverse US coal industry's decline with series of executive orders

US President Donald Trump on April 8 signed four executive orders directing new federal measures to support the nation's ailing coal industry, including designating the fuel source as a critical mineral and promoting the use of coal to power artificial intelligence data centers.

The orders also instruct federal agencies to lift barriers to coal mining, prioritize coal leasing on federal lands, and rescind any policies that seek to steer the US away from coal production or the generation of coal-fired electricity.

"We're bringing back an industry that was abandoned," Trump said during a White House signing ceremony. "We're slashing unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful, clean coal."

A final order signed by Trump directs the US Justice Department to pursue and investigate state-level policies seen by the administration as illegally or unconstitutionally discriminating against coal as an energy source.

Orders seek to reverse market trends

Much of the nation's coal, particularly the volume produced by western states, is mined on federal land.

Production in Montana and Wyoming's Powder River Basin, the nation's top-producing coal region, has fallen dramatically over the last decade. Operators there now have few economic export opportunities, and the quality of the coal is generally suited to power generation. In contrast, steelmaking coal — mined in the eastern US — fetches a higher premium.

Under the Biden administration, the US Bureau of Land Management issued proposed land use plans from its Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming and its Miles City Field Office in Montana to make BLM-managed coal resources in the planning offices' regions unavailable for future leases. Those areas lease land in the Powder River Basin, which produced 204.9 million short tons of coal in 2024, an 18.7% decline from the previous year. That is about 40.0% of the coal produced in the nation that year.

The flurry of April 8 executive orders comes after Trump largely fell short in delivering on a first-term campaign promise to revive the US coal sector.

During his first four years in office, Trump ordered the repeal of Obama-era greenhouse gas rules for the US power sector and appointed a US Environmental Protection Agency administrator who revoked the legal basis for mercury standards that prompted a historic wave of coal plant retirements.

Rick Perry, Trump's first energy secretary, oversaw a failed US Energy Department proposal to provide financial assistance to at-risk coal-fired generators. Trump's first administration also lifted a previous moratorium on federal coal leasing, eliminated a stream protection rule opposed by coal companies, and paused a health study on mountaintop removal mining, among other pro-industry actions.

Despite those efforts, coal production and related jobs fell 26.5% and 18.2%, respectively, between the year before Trump was inaugurated and the last year of his first term. The decline was largely driven by a combination of corporate and state-level climate goals and market forces — particularly the availability of cheap natural gas — as well as successful legal challenges to the first Trump administration's regulatory rollbacks.

Coal-fired resources accounted for 15% of total US electricity generation in 2024, according to US Energy Information Administration data.

More recently, US utilities operating both inside and outside of organized wholesale power markets have announced plans to extend the lives of existing coal plants. The retirement delays are due in part to surprise forecasts for projected demand growth from AI data centers and US manufacturing facilities.

Even with the delays, a recent Platts analysis found that utilities plan to shutter 61 GW of coal-fired power plants between 2025 and 2030 — equal to more than one-third of the coal capacity online in 2024.

America's Power, a national trade organization advocating for the US coal fleet and its supply chain, said Trump's April 8 actions represent a "long overdue" step to respond to warnings about risks to grid reliability from federal and state regulators. The North American Electric Reliability Corp., for example, has warned that nearly two-thirds of the US is at risk of electricity shortages over the next five years.

"For decades, most people have taken electricity and coal for granted," Michelle Bloodworth, the group's president and CEO, said in a statement. "This complacency has led to damaging federal and state policies that have caused the premature retirement of coal plants, thus weakening our electric grid and threatening our national security."

During the White House event, Trump said one of his orders grants immediate relief from Biden-era environmental regulations to 47 companies operating 66 coal plants nationwide.

In March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the Trump administration will review a Biden-era emissions rule that would require 90% carbon capture at existing coal plants with plans to operate beyond 2039, as well as regulations targeting mercury emissions and wastewater discharges from coal-fired generators.

Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel of US clean energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, said US coal use has declined due to the high cost of operating coal-fired power plants.

"No executive orders will change that market reality," Kellly said in an April 8 statement. "Increased use of coal will only be possible through subsidies — funded either by using taxpayer money or by increasing costs for American families who are already struggling with high power bills."

DOE to offer financing for coal projects

During his White House remarks, Trump argued that coal is essential to US national and economic security. "Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure and powerful form of energy there is on earth today," he said.

Trump's directives aim to promote US coal technology exports through international offtake agreements and accelerate the development of coal technologies. In addition, Trump directed the DOE secretary to determine whether coal used for steel production meets the definitions of a "critical material" and "critical mineral" under the Energy Act of 2020, and if so, add it to relevant lists.

In an April 8 news release, the DOE said it is making $200 billion in low-cost, long-term financing available for energy infrastructure, "including coal," through its Loan Program Office's Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program. The DOE said the program "can support a wide range of projects available for coal energy investments, including upgrading energy infrastructure to restart operations or operate more efficiently or at a higher output, replacing retired energy infrastructure with new energy infrastructure and building new facilities that utilize legacy energy infrastructure."

Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm, said in an email that "DOE has no authority to prevent coal plant retirements or force an owner to lose money by running the plant."

"We have seen no evidence that any company is considering building a new coal plant," Gramlich said.

US coal production hit a 60-year low in 2024 as power plant retirements drove mines to close or seek markets elsewhere, including abroad. However, coal exporters are now facing the threat of retaliatory tariffs from China and potentially other nations in response to Trump's broad and sweeping emergency tariffs.

A proposed rule targeting Chinese shipbuilders and owners from the Trump administration that the sector has said could "kill the US coal export business" is also on the horizon.