Top Trump officials from the departments of Energy and the Interior and EPA on Monday unveiled a raft of policies to increase coal mining and delay the closure of coal plants across the nation — vowing to fight for the industry that’s central to President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.
It’s an effort that could provide a short-term boost to coal but is unlikely to change the industry’s long-term downward trajectory.
Flanked by coal miners donning hard hats, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the federal government will open more than 13 million acres of public land for coal projects, while formally cutting coal royalties from 12.5 percent to 7 percent — a policy that was included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Those measures, among others at the Department of Energy and EPA, aim to keep coal plants open to win the “AI arms race” against China, according to the Trump administration.
“AI is going to change … every job, every company, every industry,” Burgum said. “None of that happens without electricity.”
“We have to have a strong, powerful coal industry — not for five years, not for 10 years. It’s got to be here for decades,” he added.
Wells Griffith, a top DOE official, also unveiled $625 million to boost the nation’s coal fleet, including $350 million to restart or retrofit existing plants. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced his agency would give coal power plant operators several more years to reduce water pollution by delaying deadlines on a Biden-era wastewater rule.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has implemented a wide range of measures to boost the coal industry. Those measures may be bearing fruit. Coal production is up more than 6 percent in the U.S. this year compared to last year, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
But critics say the sector is bad for public health and climate change. Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions than any other energy source, while also emitting large amounts of cancer-causing pollutants like mercury.
The industry praised the Trump administration moves, while environmental groups pushed back and analysts dismissed the efforts as unlikely to change the course for coal.
“Today’s announcements are another critical milestone in the fight to protect America’s electric reliability and preserve its fleet of coal-fired power plants,” Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of the coal lobbying group America’s Power, said in a statement. “Ratepayers should be grateful to President Trump and his team for their steadfast efforts to ensure that Americans have an affordable and reliable supply of electricity.”
National Mining Association President Rich Nolan said U.S. coal miners are ready to meet growing demand. “The administration’s comprehensive energy dominance strategy will ensure that our coal fleet can continue to buttress grid reliability with fuel-secure, dispatchable power,” he said.
But Holly Bender, the chief program officer at the Sierra Club, blasted the move and argued that coal power is “now not only the dirtiest form of electricity, it is one of the most expensive, contributing to the rising cost of Americans’ energy bills.”
Michelle Solomon, a manager in the electricity program at the think tank Energy Innovation, said efforts to revive coal or allow coal-fired power plants to run on other fuels are costly and that the funding announced is unlikely to change the industry’s fate.
“While the details aren’t yet clear, keeping plants online and a short-term infusion of cash to the industry will only keep customers on the hook for expensive coal power longer,” Solomon said in an email.
‘Everything that we can do’
The event made clear the Trump administration is using all existing levers to keep the nation’s coal fleet online, from boosting funding to easing EPA air and water rules and even advocating for better treatment from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Griffith said the DOE funding will go toward boiler efficiency and wastewater management upgrades at coal plants, along with “integrating carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery technologies.”
Enhanced oil recovery is the practice of injecting carbon dioxide underground to increase production at the wellhead.
“This is just the Department of Energy’s first wave of investment to make President Trump’s vision of clean, beautiful coal a reality,” Griffith said. “The time to unleash this abundant, affordable, reliable resource is now.”
Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Chris Wright used emergency authorities in the Federal Power Act to force a local utility to continue to operate a coal plant in Michigan past its planned retirement. The utility, Consumers Energy, said the order raised net costs by nearly $30 million over just five weeks.
Last week, Wright said utilities support delays to coal plant retirements.
“Now we’re just talking with utilities,” he said. “More utilities are coming out of the woodwork, saying, ‘Shoot, we got forced to agree to close our coal plants. Can you help us? We don’t want to close our coal plants.’”
“If we close all our coal plants, we’ll drive electricity prices up,” he said.
Read more: Trump has vowed to make coal king again. How’s it going?
And yet it’s unclear whether the administration can maintain or expand a market for domestic coal. Almost 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation are slated to stop burning coal or shift to natural gas by the end of the year, including the plant in Michigan and other units in New Hampshire, Iowa, Utah, Indiana, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington state.
Extending the deadlines for EPA’s new rule on coal plants’ wastewater would similarly help the industry and help maintain coal-fired power, Zeldin said.
In a proposed rule, the agency said companies could get an extra five years to reduce discharges of three major coal waste streams that are known to contain toxic heavy metals like mercury and cadmium.
The agency is also moving forward with plans to amend its regional haze rule, casting current timelines as too onerous for coal-fired power plants.
The congressionally authorized haze program aims to return natural visibility to the Grand Canyon and more than 150 other national parks and wilderness areas by 2064.
Coal-fired power plants rank high as a source of haze-forming pollution. During the Obama and Biden administrations, EPA had used the program’s requirements to prod coal plants to either retool with improved pollution controls or retire.
Under Trump, EPA is already charting a more industry-friendly course by relaxing the yardstick for measuring states’ long-term progress toward the 2064 cleanup goal. That new reading has spurred two lawsuits by environmental groups that contest EPA’s approval of haze reduction plans submitted by West Virginia and Ohio before the 4th and 6th U.S. circuit courts of appeal, respectively.
The advance notice of proposed rulemaking released Monday appears aimed at putting the administration’s approach on a firmer regulatory footing and seeks public feedback on a variety of questions, including whether the Clean Air Act allows EPA to strive for “something less stringent” than a return to natural visibility.
After weighing public input received in response to the advance notice, EPA will proceed with a formal proposal.
Zeldin also offered to push lawmakers to fulfill long industry lists. “Please let us know everything that we can do so that we can put those check marks on these members of Congress’ long lists of asks slash demands,” he said.
‘Huge friends of coal’
Elected officials from coal-heavy states were present at Monday’s event, including Wyoming’s Republican Gov. Mark Gordon and Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, as well as North Dakota Republican Rep. Julie Fedorchak.
The lawmakers present are “huge friends of coal,” Burgum said, noting that the administration is moving forward with coal leasing applications in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Alabama.
The Trump administration is moving to lift a Biden-era ban on coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, a region of rolling grasslands in southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming that pumps out 40 percent of the nation’s coal.
Wyoming, the officials argued, is an example of how the U.S. can boost coal production without damaging the environment while blasting renewables as unreliable.
“We all remember the pain and the heartache when Joe Biden said, ‘I want this EPA … to prioritize climate over energy that’s available, affordable, reliable,’ and that put America’s head in the noose in the fight against China,” said Barrasso. “We realize in Wyoming … that you can protect the environment without punishing the economy.”
Gordon added, “It is a false choice to say either we’re going to move forward or we’re going to stop in our tracks and try to do climate over everything else.”
Burgum at the event cracked jokes about solar and wind power, which he cast as unreliable and “dependent on the weather.”
“Solar’s been reported to be having catastrophic failures,” said Burgum. “They have a technical term for it: It’s called sunset.”
Burgum cast reviving coal as critical to national security, highlighting China’s dependence on coal and the fact that coal contains critical minerals that the Trump administration has elevated.
“Guess what is in beautiful clean coal; many of these deposits of beautiful clean coal are filled with gallium, germanium, critical minerals that we’re dependent on from China,” he said.
Fedorchak at the event said she was previously a state commissioner, a liaison to the Midwest grid operator and president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Fedorchak argued the U.S. has built a grid that’s reliant on the weather and touted a bill she’s co-sponsoring, H.R. 3843, which would halt the retirement of any baseload power plants in areas facing elevated risk.
“What do grid operators want? Dispatchable power,” she said. “Dispatchable power, oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear.”
