EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin promised to deliver for the coal industry Tuesday, as part of a broader push to reverse the sector’s fate.
“Many of the items that were on your wish list are now done,” Zeldin told members of the National Coal Council gathered at the Willard hotel in Washington. “Over the course of the coming few months, hopefully [we get to] the remainder of those items, although I will not prejudge the outcome of any rulemaking.”
The Trump administration is pouring billions of dollars into the coal sector, clawing back regulations and working to build an export hub on the West Coast to ship more coal abroad while courting countries like India as potential purchasers of metallurgical coal.
Zeldin — speaking at the second meeting of the newly revived National Coal Council — ticked through a list of regulations that the administration has already rolled back. That included EPA’s move to roll back federal oversight of coal ash, coal wastewater, and moves to repeal the 2024 updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards regulation, as well as carbon pollution standards.
“Between now and your next meeting, I’m excited to be able to share with great optimism, hope, and enthusiasm that you all, again, not prejudging the outcome of any rulemaking, we’ll have a lot to celebrate the next time you all get together again in January,” said Zeldin, speaking to a gathering of Trump administration officials and coal and railroad industry insiders.
The coal sector is gunning for more help to unlock coal exports out of the Powder River Basin, roll back EPA regulations and keep aging coal plants from planned retirements. The council finalized two reports Tuesday — one focused on exports and the second on maintaining the existing coal fleet — that laid out the sector’s asks of the Trump administration.
Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of America’s Power, a coal industry advocacy group, said at the meeting that the industry is eyeing at least seven EPA regulations, including the Biden-era 2024 Clean Power Plant rules, mercury and air toxic standard, coal wastewater regulations, and regional haze, as well as rules at the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But she also warned that time is running out under the Trump administration.
“We recognize that implementing these recommendations is going to be challenging, but it is so critical that the administration implement these recommendations as quickly as possible because there are only 30 months left before the next president is inaugurated,” she said.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum echoed Zeldin while blasting past Democratic administrations for suffocating the coal sector. “I know exactly how much abuse was going on, of twisting the law to try to shut down an industry,” he said.
Burgum lauded Trump for ending a national ban on coal leasing and said his agency has opened more than 13 million acres for leasing, reduced the royalty rates to no more than 7 percent and made metallurgical coal a critical mineral. Burgum also touted faster Interior reviews, including completing a review of a Tennessee mine within 15 days and 28 days for a mine in Wyoming.
“We’re not breaking the law. We’re just breaking the belief that you can’t work quickly in this space,” said Burgum.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the focus is “not just to stop the closure, but where can we grow,” and highlighted the reopening of a plant in Maryland, DOE’s granting of awards to build new plants in Alaska and West Virginia, and the push to export both thermal and metallurgical coal.
“The world needs more coal,” said Wright. “The world wants to do business with reliable, strong strategic partners like the United States of America.”
Industry wish list
Trump officials in recent months have continued a full-throttle strategy to revive coal, but the industry’s list of goals continues to grow.
The focus now: Rolling back more regulations, boosting exports and elevating the value of American coal.
“We need a battle plan,” said Wright. “We need specific, concrete recommendations from people that have … the knowledge, that have the scars, that know where you could invest, what did kill [coal].”
The National Coal Council in its report called on EPA to finalize repealing greenhouse gas regulations for new and existing coal power plants and the underlying endangerment finding, as well as the 2024 effluent limitations guidelines, and reform the New Source Review regulations. “Congress should codify changes to regulations that are promulgated by EPA,” the report states.
EPA last year proposed a repeal of Biden-era rules that would require coal-fired power plants to retrofit with carbon capture equipment or retire. Last summer’s draft was designed to prevent future administrations from reintroducing similar standards.
A final rule to roll back the 2024 standards entered White House review more than two months ago. But it is not expected to include the legal arguments from last summer that proposed a new reading of EPA’s Clean Air Act regulatory authority that would preclude it from regulating greenhouse gases from the power sector. EPA is expected to deal with those issues in a new draft that hasn’t entered review yet.
EPA has also pursued multiple changes to its air permitting rules that could make it easier and cheaper for aging coal plants to replace outdated equipment and extend their operational life.
The council’s report also calls on other agencies to take action, including a recommendation for DOE to “designate a specific amount of loan guarantee authority for new coal power plants and establish a grant program using DOE’s nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration competitions as a model.”
Democrats are currently accusing the agency of illegally repurposing a $350 million set-aside for carbon capture under the bipartisan infrastructure law to instead prop up old coal plants.
At Interior, Burgum said his agency is working to bolster the value of coal and generate studies underpinning national resources.
“This week, the U.S. Geologic Survey is publishing a new report that reflects how America has been blessed with these incredible, extraordinary natural resources, and that report is going to show that there’s an additional 356 billion short tons of coal resources in our country,” said Burgum “That’s enough for another 600 years. There’s a long life ahead of us.”
The department is also reviewing how the “fair market value of coal” is calculated, accusing previous Democratic administrations of using “an older, inflated price.” Doing so, he said, meant bids to mine coal were considered too low and rejected.
“We’re going to bring that up to reflect current realities,” said Burgum. “That’s going to put more of your bids in the money to keep developing these resources. Because the reality is clear, we need more electricity, and to do that, we need more coal.”
Focus on exports
Coal executives at the meeting called for additional investments in U.S. ports and railways to export coal to energy-hungry markets abroad.
“Such ports exist already on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast. Their capacity can be increased, which is detailed in the reports,” said Peabody Energy President and CEO Jim Grech, who chairs the National Coal Council. “But we also really much need to unlock West Coast pathways to Asia, which would dramatically improve our U.S. export profile, while Asia represents 85 percent of global energy coal imports.”
Jimmy Brock, CEO of Core Natural Resources, the council’s vice chair, added that the U.S. must prioritize “the development of world-class export infrastructure, remove unfair trade impediments, reform regulatory, tax and fee policies, and continue to promote world-class mining innovations.” The U.S. currently exports nearly 100 million tons of coal each year, he said.
Rich Nolan, the president and CEO of the National Mining Association, listed out policy recommendations tied to the report, including building out “large West Coast coal ports,” exploring opportunities for additional port capacity in Mexico, particularly at the Port of Guaymas, as well as the Pacific Northwest and infrastructure on the East Coast.
The report also calls for reducing or scrapping taxes and fees to make U.S. coal more competitive abroad, lowering the cost of shipping coal to port, and potentially freezing the government’s collection of fees to reclaim abandoned mines to “assess if or when collection of subsequent fees will be necessary going forward.” It also calls for scrapping “tariffs and non-tariff barriers on U.S. coal in export markets, including China and India” and expanding efforts to sanction Russian coal.
“What stands in our way is not a shortage of coal, but barriers of our own making,” said Nolan. “Inadequate West Coast export capacity, transportation constraints, port limitations, lengthening permitting, and regulatory costs, all of which combine to weaken our competitiveness.”
Curt Coccodrilli, DOE’s acting assistant secretary and the principal deputy assistant secretary for DOE’s Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office, said a growing list of countries — India, Kenya, Thailand, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan — are interested in tapping into the United States’ metallurgical and thermal coal resources, and the administration is scouring the nation to ensure a “world-class terminal” is built.
“From the tip of Mexico right up to Alaska, we have looked at about every piece of real estate we can find on a map to ensure that happens,” said Coccodrilli.
Jean Chemnick and Alex Guillén contributed to this report.
