Trump signed coal executive orders. What now?
Is coal coming back? Or does this just delay the inevitable?
Happy Monday! This was written on April 8, 2025, the day that the EOs were released, so it relies on the secondhand scuttlebutt of various other reporters. Here’s links to the text of each EO. Tell me what you think, and I’ll write more in the coming days.
Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241
Strengthening the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid
President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders at 3 p.m. ET [Tuesday, April 8] relating to coal production. The EOs are expected to allow coal-fired generators to stay open past their planned retirement dates to bolster grid reliability and achieve “affordable and reliable energy.”
The Associated Press reports:
According to two senior White House officials, Trump will use his emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for retirement to keep producing electricity to meet rising U.S. power demand amid growth in data centers, artificial intelligence and electric cars. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue before the president’s announcement, expected Tuesday afternoon…
The orders expected Tuesday will direct federal agencies to identify coal resources on federal lands, lift barriers to coal mining and prioritize coal leasing on U.S. lands, according to information from the White House officials.
The orders also will 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.
The orders also seek to promote coal and coal technology exports and to accelerate development of coal technologies.
Politico reports that the order draws on existing emergency authority in the “90-year-old section of the Federal Power Act… that allows the Energy secretary to direct any power plant to keep operating.” This provision has been used to “keep particular plants running for 18 months in one case and longer in others to avoid dangerous power shortages.”
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)’s latest long-range reliability report estimated that 115 GW of coal and natural-gas power plant capacity is likely to retire between now and 2034, which pushes power reserves below safe limits. MISO is already at “high” risk of blackouts in 2025 and beyond, and “shortfalls may occur at normal peak conditions.”
Most interestingly is that the EOs are expected to define coal as a mineral and direct the Energy Secretary to consider defining coal as a “critical mineral.” Stay tuned for a breakdown of the published executive orders in the coming days.
This piece was originally published at Center of the American Experiment on April 8, 2025.
Here’s the rest of the news that caught my eye last week:
Solar power equipment vulnerable to hacks, April 7, 2025, Center of the American Experiment. While anything and everything seems to be hackable these days, several of the largest inverter manufacturers for solar panels were vulnerable to hacks in a recent study — and one dragged its feet to correct issues.
U.S. electricity demand to grow 50% by 2050, April 8, 2025, Center of the American Experiment. It’s a huge unknown how much data centers will contribute to electricity demand, but here’s news about another projection.
Energy transition has a global shipping problem, report finds, April 10, 2025, Center of the American Experiment. Great work from the National Center for Energy Analytics (NCEA) estimates that shipyard capacity would need to nearly double by 2035 to move around all of the materials a so-called “energy transition” would require.
Interest in electric vehicles dropping, April 14, 2025, Center of the American Experiment. And it probably isn’t just Elon Musk and “political controversy!”
While Trump's actions might keep some coal plants operating longer, particularly in states without renewable portfolio standards, it is unlikely that they will result in the construction of any new coal generating stations. The concern that a future climate alarmist administration might reimpose a 90% CCS or CCUS requirement on relatively new coal generators would be a significant deterrent, since it appears highly unlikely that 90% reduction could be achieved in a retrofit installation at anything approaching reasonable cost.
Nicely done, as usual. However, a question: the EO on state over reach concerns me. While nothing pisses me off more that state regs promoting green energy, I wonder about the constitutionality of the EO in the first place. Were I a radical legislature (think, California or Nebraska), I would argue the 10th Amendment gives us the right to regulate plant siting. The Emergency Powers Act seems heavy-handed. Your thoughts, ma'am?