President Donald Trump is courting coal … again. But unlike during his unsuccessful 2017 bid to save the fossil fuel from a slide toward extinction, this time around the country is projected to need much more power to satisfy the voracious energy appetite of the artificial intelligence industry, writes Brian Dabbs. Coal, its supporters hope, could go from dead fuel walking to American hero, keeping the lights on one new power plant at a time. But even with Trump’s recent actions to ease coal’s comeback by lessening its regulatory burden, the fuel faces obstacles. For one, it’s dirty, emitting large amounts of planet-warming pollution driving climate change — to make no mention of the toxic and carcinogenic substances burning coal releases into the air. It’s also expensive, costing more than wind and solar power in some cases. And coal is in a yearslong decline: The fossil fuel powered about 16 percent of the country’s electric grid in 2023, down from 30 percent in 2016. For the first time, solar power created more electricity than coal in the European Union last year. “There are folks who, with an eye towards repowering a coal plant, might buy a coal plant that can economically run for a few more years,” Ben Baker, with the Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund, told Brian. “But this was already being talked about in the first Trump presidency … and coal didn't pencil.” Still, new grant funding in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law could help the coal industry clean up through carbon capture funding — a potential life raft. In 2023, the Biden administration awarded $350 million to a power plant in North Dakota to install technology that captures carbon pollution before its release into the atmosphere. A new round of carbon capture grants could also go to coal. Trump is also staffing his agencies with pro-coal administrators. The Energy Department last week rehired Steve Winberg, who was an assistant DOE secretary during Trump’s first term and is CEO of a group that supports retrofitting existing coal plants with carbon capture. Mark Christie, Trump’s new chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said last week that the U.S. needs to “stop the premature retirements of dispatchable generation and build more,” adding that “otherwise we freeze in the dark.” (“Dispatchable” sources include fossil fuels, which don’t rely on intermittent sources like wind or sunny skies.) Still, other Trump appointees may disagree. Elon Musk, whom Trump has installed in his newly created Department of Government Efficiency, recently posted on X that “solar power will be the vast majority of power generation in the future.”
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