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US President Donald Trump signed four executive orders on April 8, 2025, which focused on reviving coal. The latest move is one of the many taken by the Trump Administration since coming to office in January 2025 to eliminate Joe Biden-era laws to curb greenhouse gases both within US states and nationwide.
The orders use words like ‘beautiful clean coal industry’ and ‘cost effective’ to describe coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.
Trump, standing in front of a group of miners, said: “Today, we are taking the historic action to help American workers, miners’ families and consumers. We are ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful clean coal once and for all. Pound for pound coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure and powerful form of energy. It’s cheap, incredibly efficient, high density and it’s almost indestructible. You could drop a bomb on it and it’s going to be there for you to use the next day which you can’t say with any other form of energy.”
The orders said the main purpose is to secure the country’s economic prosperity and national security, lower the cost of living and provide for increases in electrical demand from emerging technologies.
"Our Nation’s beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers. We must encourage and support our Nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilise our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries, and assist our allies,” the orders signed by Trump said.
Within 30 days of the date of the order, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of the Treasury have been asked to identify “any guidance, regulations, programs, and policies within their respective executive department or agency that seek to transition the Nation away from coal production and electricity generation”.
The Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright has been asked to take all necessary actions to accelerate the development, deployment, and commercialisation of coal technologies. All funding mechanisms should be utilised to support the expansion of coal technology, according to the orders.
The Secretary of Energy has been further directed to submit a detailed action plan within the next 90 days to the President, outlining the funding mechanisms, programs, and policy actions taken to accelerate coal technology deployment.
In a related development, President Trump used his emergency authority to allow older coal-fired power plants to keep producing electricity.
Environmentalists have reacted to the move with dismay. Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said that “forcing coal plants to stay online will cost Americans more, get more people sick with respiratory and heart conditions, and lead to more premature deaths”.
It is interesting to note that an analysis by Energy Innovation in 2023 found that 99 per cent of existing US coal plants are more expensive to run than replacement by local wind, solar, and energy storage resources. “Transitioning to clean energy resources would save enough to finance nearly 150 gigawatts of four-hour battery storage, and would generate $589 billion in new investment across the US,” the report said.