Trump Says He’s Authorizing Use of Coal for Energy Production

The United States has moved away from coal-fired power plants as its primary source of electricity since their peak in the 2000s.

Piles of coal at PacifiCorp's Hunter coal-fired power plant outside of Castle Dale, Utah, on Nov. 14, 2019. George Frey/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was authorizing his administration to use coal-fired power plants for energy production to counter China’s economic advantage.

In a Truth Social post, Trump stated that the nation’s coal industry had been “held captive by environmental extremists,” which he said had allowed countries such as China to gain an economic advantage over the United States by opening hundreds of coal-fired power plants.

Trump stated that he would move to authorize his administration “to immediately begin producing energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL,” but did not provide further details.

The move would mark a major reversal in U.S. environmental policy, as the country has shifted away from coal, which was its primary fuel for electricity generation in the 2000s, toward lower-cost alternatives such as natural gas and renewable energy.

As of 2023, coal made up about 15 percent of the power generated in the United States, a significant decline from 51 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

After taking office on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to review existing regulations that restricted the use of domestic energy resources—particularly coal, hydropower, and nuclear energy resources—and declared a national energy emergency to expedite the development of the nation’s energy infrastructure.

Trump stated in his order that “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations have impeded the development of these resources, limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens.”

To fulfill Trump’s objectives, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin said on March 12 that the agency would take steps to roll back several environmental regulations in what he called the “largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history.”

The EPA outlined its planned regulatory rollbacks in a series of statements, targeting rules or suites of rules initially authored by the agency and published during the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, which it considers to be the origin of “trillions in regulatory costs.”

The EPA stated that it would reconsider the previous administration’s rules on power plant emissions, commonly referred to as the “Clean Power Plan 2.0.”

It stated that the Supreme Court had struck down a 2015 version of the Clean Power Plan. In that ruling, the court “barred EPA from misusing the Clean Air Act to manipulate Americans’ energy choices and shift the balance of the nation’s electrical fuel mix,” according to the EPA.

“President Trump promised to kill the Clean Power Plan in his first term, and we continue to build on that progress now,” Zeldin said. “We are seeking to ensure that the agency follows the rule of law while providing all Americans with access to reliable and affordable energy.”

Earlier this month, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that the United States should restart its shuttered coal-fired power plants to meet surging electricity demand.

“I think as part of the national energy emergency which President Trump has declared we’ve got to keep every plant open,” Burgum said in an interview with Bloomberg. “And if there have been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back on.”

Burgum also stated that the country should keep existing coal-fired power plants operational by easing environmental regulations imposed by previous administrations.

China’s construction of coal-fired power plants reached its highest level in a decade last year, according to a report by the Finland-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air released on Feb. 13. The report states that China constructed 94.5 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants last year, the highest volume of new builds since 2015.

Austin Alonzo, Owen Evans, and Reuters contributed to this report.