President Donald Trump on 9 April signed a series of four executive orders aimed at boosting the struggling coal industry, arguing that although it has long been in decline it can be revived to meet future high energy demands from manufacturing and the huge data centres needed for the expected uptake of artificial intelligence and electric cars. Trump, who has pushed for US ‘energy dominance’ in the global market, has long suggested that coal can help meet surging electricity demand.
“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all,’’ he said at the signing. “All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened, if they’re modern enough, or they’ll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built. And we’re going to put the miners back to work.”
Under four orders, Trump uses his emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for retirement to keep producing electricity to meet rising US power demand. Trump also directed federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining and prioritise coal leasing on US land.
In a related action, Trump also signed a proclamation offering coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from federal requirements to reduce emissions of toxic chemicals such as mercury, arsenic and benzene.
The offer to power plants and other industrial polluters gives them an opportunity to gain exemptions from rules imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, under Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, has set up an electronic mailbox to allow regulated companies to request a presidential exemption under the Clean Air Act to a host of Biden–era rules.
“Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure and powerful form of energy,” Trump said at the signing. “It’s cheap, incredibly efficient, high density, and it’s almost indestructible.”
Trump’s orders also direct Interior secretary Doug Burgum to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands and require federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the nation away from coal production. And they seek to promote coal and coal technology exports, and accelerate development of coal technologies.
Targeting democratic states
Trump also targeted what he called ‘overreach’ by Democratic-controlled states to limit energy production to slow climate change. He ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to take “all appropriate action to stop the enforcement” of such laws.
But the governors of New York and New Mexico, Kathy Hochul and Michelle Lujan Grisham, who are co-chairs of the US Climate Alliance, hit back, saying that said Trump’s order illegally attempts to usurp states’ rights to act on climate.
“The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority. We are a nation of states – and laws – and we will not be deterred,” the two Democrats said. “We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans’ fundamental right to clean air and water (and) grow the clean energy economy.”
The climate alliance is a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors representing nearly 55% of the U.S. population.
Impact on the US economy
An article online on 10 April by ABC News staff asserted that ‘It no longer makes economic sense to maintain or build coal-fired plants”. It continued “president Donald Trump’s quest to conduct a resurgence of coal production and utilisation in the US is far-fetched and unlikely, according to energy experts”
The likelihood that the US will return to a heavy reliance on coal is improbable, given the current energy infrastructure, emerging technologies and global trends, energy experts told ABC News. In the USA coal is used primarily for the generation of electricity, but US coal power capacity has been declining in recent decades. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, in 2011, coal accounted for more than 40% of total electricity generation in the country. By 2016, that percentage had dropped to about 16%.
The major driver for the decline in coal use is the economic competition with cheaper and cleaner fuels, such as natural gas and renewables, Ryna Cui, research director for the Centre for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland, told ABC News.
“Coal plants are no longer economically viable, and these executive orders will do nothing to change the basic underlying market dynamics,” said Sanya Carley, presidential distinguished professor at the Kleinman Centre for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Natural gas and renewable energy sources have become more cost-effective than coal, said Akshaya Jha, associate professor of economics and public policy at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. The majority of the U.S. coal plants are at the end of their lifetime, so it makes little economic sense to continue operating them, said Ryna Cui, while building new coal facilities presents high economic and financial risks and would need to be in operation for multiple decades.
