President Trump signed four executive actions on Tuesday aimed at reversing policies that transitioned the country away from coal production and aimed at boosting America’s “beautiful clean coal industry,” as the White House put it.
The actions are meant to help the U.S. achieve affordable and reliable energy by “slashing unnecessary regulations,” Mr. Trump said. The president said he’s using the Defense Production Act to “turbocharge” coal mining in America. Mr. Trump also said his administration is working through the legalities of making it harder for companies to shut down coal plants.
“Today, we’re taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers,” Mr. Trump said in the White House East Room, flanked by men in coal mining uniforms and hard hats. “We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all. And it wasn’t just Biden, it was Obama, and there were others. But we’re doing the exact opposite. And all those plants that have been closed are going to be opened.”
Alex Brandon / AP 
Mr. Trump has had a long affinity for coal, as previous Democratic administrations and many developed nations have worked to move away from the fossil fuel toward renewable resources. The term “clean coal” typically refers to processes designed to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants, but environmental groups say any coal combustion is harmful.
The president’s move Tuesday defines coal as a “mineral,” which the administration says will give it more leeway on its use. The government has traditionally classified it as a nonrenewable fossil fuel. One of the executive orders directs agencies to lift barriers to coal mining on federal lands and prioritize coal leasing, formally ending an Obama-era moratorium against coal leasing on federal land. The president also directed federal agencies to rescind any policies transitioning the country away from coal production.
Another executive order the president signed Tuesday is meant to promote grid reliability, including by using fossil fuels. And yet another executive order Mr. Trump signed Tuesday directs the Justice Department to investigate states that are discriminating against coal.
“For years, people would just bemoan this industry and decimate the industry for absolutely no reason, because with modern technology and all of the other things that we do, it’s one of the great, great forms of energy,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday.
Mr. Trump has expressed a desire to harness U.S. coal, along with oil, natural gas and nuclear power, and this executive order is one of a number of actions he has taken to reverse Obama and Biden administration energy policies. The president has also withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, and declared a national emergency on energy, and he ended predecessor Joe Biden’s efforts to encourage widespread EV adoption.
The president said coal miners want to mine coal, not work in high-tech jobs or other fields.
“You could give ’em a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of job, and they’d be unhappy,” Mr. Trump said, with the miners behind him. “They want to mine coal. That’s what they love to do.”
But despite Mr. Trump’s emphasis on coal in his first term, coal production decreased slightly between 2016 before he took office and 2020, his final full year in office, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And, in keeping with a trend in declining coal employment, there were fewer Americans working in the coal industry in January 2020 ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic than there were in January 2017 when he took office, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
No new coal plant has come online since 2013, during the Obama years, and the average age of the current fleet is 53 years old. Currently, coal makes up about 16% of the electricity mix in the U.S., down from 50% two decades ago.
As of this year, only about 41,000 Americans work in the coal industry. By comparison, solar energy employed nearly 280,000 Americans in 2023, according to the National Solar Job Census.
Environmental groups suggested Mr. Trump’s executive order to reinvigorate coal will be a step backward.
“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the National Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
“Trump’s coal orders take his worship of dirty fossil fuels to a gross and disturbingly reckless new level,” said Jason Rylander of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Forcing old coal plants to keep spewing pollution into our air and water means more cancer, more asthma and more premature deaths.”
Tracy J. Wholf and
contributed to this report.
