Trump Orders Protect Aging, Polluting Coal Plants and Allow More Mining
President Donald Trump signed executive orders on Tuesday that keep aging coal generators running and undermine efforts to rein in pollution, including mercury and arsenic emissions
President Donald Trump speaks Tuesday during an executive order signing ceremony related to expand the mining and use of coal in the United State in the East Room of the White House.
CLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump on Tuesday made an unprecedented peacetime intervention in the electricity sector, using executive orders to force aging coal-burning plants to stay open and feed soaring energy demand from American tech companies.
At a White House signing ceremony that resembled a campaign-style rally, Trump signed orders squarely aimed at reviving coal mining and coal power, which have both been in decline for more than a decade. Among other things, they direct Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to identify which regions are at risk of electricity shortages and bar the shutdowns of coal plants deemed essential.
“Unlike wind and solar, coal plants can run 24 hours a day in rain, sleet or snow,” Trump said, flanked by rows of coal miners donning hard hats. “From now on, we’ll ensure our critically needed coal plants … remain online and fully operational.”
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The president signed a total of four executive orders after a speech that downplayed the danger of climate change, blasted the “green new scam,” lauded “beautiful clean coal” and attacked past administrations pursuing tough pollution standards and for making it harder to mine for coal.
The announcement was quickly followed by a slew of policy shifts, including the Interior Department’s lifting of a ban on leasing in the Powder River Basin, one of the biggest coal-producing hubs in the nation. Conservation groups immediately warned the orders would catapult carbon emissions and dangerous pollution.
“Trump’s attempt to bail out coal is a recipe for raising prices for consumers,” said Jenny Rowland-Shea, public lands director at the Center for American Progress. “Coal’s decline was a problem of economics, and its revival only works if prices increase. These executive orders threaten to make energy costs higher for Americans while continuing to ignore real solutions to energy independence.”
But the pace of electricity demand to serve future data centers is still guesswork. The centers could consume between 7 percent and 12 percent of U.S. electricity output in 2028, from 4.4 percent now, according to estimates. Total peak power demand for centers could range from 74,000 to 132,000 megawatts in 2028.
In the meantime, tens of thousands of megawatts of coal plant capacity were expected to shut down through the end of the decade. Coal generation that accounted for half of U.S. electricity in 2001 is now at about 15 percent. Most of the planned or proposed generation to replace it has been solar or wind power, along with battery storage. But the projects have struggled to get under construction. And they now face a more hostile Trump administration.
Power companies looking to build new natural gas generation are also seeing longer wait times for turbines. That makes the next few years a time of unusual risk for power operations, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the interstate grid’s security monitor.
Wright’s review of what coal generation is needed and where is due in 90 days. No other deadline were set for taking action under the order. Trump’s action is tied to a 90-year-old provision in the Federal Power Act, section 202(c), that was written for wartime use, according to legal scholars, but has been used in recent decades in short-duration grid emergencies.
Trump has branded experts’ warnings of future climate-related consequences as “lunatic.” One of his orders directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to take legal action to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and regulations that address “climate change” or involving “environmental, social, and governance” and “greenhouse gas” emissions. Twenty-four states have greenhouse gas reduction goals or other climate policies, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
Wind is blowing pollution from a coal burning power plant.
Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said it’s ultimately up to the courts to halt state or local programs, and it’s not clear what Bondi will do.
In his White House remarks, Trump pledged to build a policy wall of some kind around coal operations, to prevent a future Democratic president from reversing his policies to reduce coal’s impact. “Republicans are very much for clean coal, and we’re going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups and downs of the world of politics,” Trump said. Democrats in the future are “going to have to go through hell to close you up.”
But Ted Kelly, a lead counsel on utility policy for the Environmental Defense Fund, attacked Trump’s actions as a threat to public health and safety.
“Burning coal releases deadly pollution into our air, including mercury that causes brain damage in young children and other toxics that cause cancer, heart and lung diseases,” Kelly said in a statement. “It’s also the main cause of climate change, which is causing the increasingly extreme fires, floods and storms that put us all at risk.”
Kelly also challenged the use of section 202(c) emergency authority under the Federal Power Act as the basis for Trump’s action.
“That law is designed for, and limited to, sudden emergencies creating an immediate risk of blackouts or other grid instability,” Kelly said. “Power plant retirements driven by economics are properly addressed by planning and action by utilities and their regulators — not by irrational and unlawful emergency actions.”
The limits of the law have never been directly tested in a U.S. Supreme Court review, a recent law review analysis said.
“Nothing here seems to change the economics, and it’s the economics that have held coal-fired power production down,” said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies. “We have seen no evidence that any company is considering building a new coal plant or that supply chains or manufacturing could support it.”
Trump’s array of orders aimed at boosting the production and use of coal in the U.S. will undoubtedly face headwinds — from legal challenges to market conditions, including competition with cheap natural gas and renewables.
One order aimed at “reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” lays out a multipronged approach for expanding mining. It calls on Wright to determine whether coal used to produce steel should be defined as “critical” under the Energy Act of 2020 — a designation that would open coal to both streamlined permitting and federal funding.
It also “directs relevant agencies to identify coal resources on Federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining, and prioritize coal leasing on those lands.”
The president also took aim at regulations affecting coal, and through his order directed the White House Council on Environmental Quality to help agencies in adopting “coal-related categorical exclusions” under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. He also directed the secretary of the Interior to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands, which has repeatedly been slapped down in court.
Within minutes, the Interior Department reversed a ban on coal leasing on federal lands and reopened the Powder River Basin to coal leasing. The agency also lowered the rate coal miners must pay to extract coal from public lands and scrapped a Biden-era rule change around notifications of mine safety violations.
“The Golden Age is here, and we are starting to ‘Mine, Baby, Mine’ for clean American coal,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.
Critics of the order were quick to point out that coal production on federal land has fallen steeply in recent decades. According to federal data, coal companies as of 2023 held 279 federal leases on almost 422,000 acres of public land. That’s a sharp dip from 489 leases on more than 730,000 acres of public land in 1990.
Trump also granted some coal plants a reprieve on compliance with EPA regulations that tightened the limits on emissions of mercury and other dangerous metals.
The president inked a proclamation that pushes back the compliance deadline for the agency’s updated Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for those plants from July 2027 to July 2029. Under the Clean Air Act, the standards are aimed at limiting emissions of mercury, arsenic and almost 190 other pollutants tied to serious health effects such as cancer and birth defects.
EPA under former President Joe Biden took the opposite position. The required controls were available to close a loophole on mercury emissions for plants that burn the low-grade form of coal known as lignite.
The updated regulations also slashed a soot emissions rate for all coal-fired plants that serves as a regulatory stand-in for releases of arsenic, nickel and other hazardous metals. Taken together, the package modestly strengthened the original MATS issued more than a decade ago. The regulations are among a number of Biden-era air toxics rules that the Trump administration now plans to revisit and possibly repeal.
In the interim, EPA last month offered similar compliance breaks to companies in eight other sectors if they emailed their applications for a “presidential exemption” by March 31. While EPA has declined to name the applicants, the power sector appears to be the first to benefit from the exemption program.
Trump on Tuesday also said he is directing DOE’s Wright to keep the Cholla Power Plant in Arizona operating, even though it was slated to close this month. The president also said his administration was offering up “immediate” relief to 47 companies operating 66 coal plants across the nation.
“We’re going to be crushing Biden-era environmental restrictions,” Trump said.
Peter Behr is a senior energy reporter for Energywire covering power grid reliability, climate policy and cybersecurity. He also has covered shale gas development and nuclear power issues for E&E.
Hannah Northey covers the nexus of mining, environmental policy and politics—from EV battery labs to new mines—for E&E News.
Sean Reilly is a reporter for E&E News. He writes about air quality policy and regulations.
E&E News provides essential energy and environment news for professionals.
Source: www.scientificamerican.com