'Beautiful, clean coal' could get a major boost from Trump team

by Shoko Oda

The US coal industry is once again enjoying support from the White House. Yet that’s unlikely to quell the economic challenges that underpin a long-term decline for the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Just this week, President Donald Trump in a social media post touted “BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL.” His administration has signaled it’s eyeing emergency powers to restart shuttered plants and has launched a sweeping overhaul of US environmental mandates. The moves overlap a macro trend that’s also poised to help the industry: surging power demand from data centers. Already, power companies have extended, or are considering extending, the lives of some plants that had been ticketed for extinction. All of this suggests the US may burn more coal in the near term. 

But in some ways, rhetoric from the current administration is a bit toned down from Trump’s first term and national political support has also eased since then. Even more fundamentally, experts argue that the industry is still battling headwinds that will drag on for years.

“Power-plant owners, operators and developers don’t think of investments in terms of administrations — they think 10, 15, 20 years down the road,” said Timothy Fox, an analyst at Washington-based ClearView Energy Partners.

Much of the demise for coal has been in the cards for years. The challenge has come not just from federal mandates and public pressure to cut back on emissions, but also competition from cheaper sources of energy. Federal regulations have also raised operational costs.

Coal power in 2024 made up around 15% of US electricity generation for all sectors, down from more than 50% in 2001, according to the Energy Information Administration. As recently as 2020, Peabody Energy Corp., the largest US coal miner, was at risk of declaring bankruptcy for a second time due to demand declines. And banks have also pulled out from financing coal in recent years on concerns over backing stranded assets. 

Joe Biden’s administration sped up coal’s inexorable decline. US data show that 71 coal units are set to retire by 2030. 

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in an interview with Bloomberg News this month that the Trump administration is working on a plan to stem the closure of plants. Wright declined to provide specifics of the proposal other than to say the “general mechanism” of it would be market-based in an effort to remove obstacles “so entrepreneurs can build new systems and operate the ones they’ve got already.” 

There are significant challenges to overcome, according to Josh Price, director of energy and utilities at Capstone LLC.

Restarting a closed plant would require capital expenses to fix it up so that it can run properly, and it’s unclear who would bear that cost. The industry would also grapple with a labor shortage and inadequate rail infrastructure to transport the fuel, Price added. 

That doesn’t mean Trump’s efforts won’t create at least a short-term boost for coal use. Some plants undoubtedly will stay online longer than planned. 

In December, Vistra Corp. said it planned to prolong the life of a large coal-fired plant in Illinois. Utility giant Southern Co. says extending coal is among its options to meet demand from artificial intelligence.

The strongest prospects for coal, though, appear outside the US. Demand continues to rise in India and China. And Japan — the lone G7 country without a phaseout deadline for coal-fired power — has taken the view that scrapping inefficient coal plants will need careful consideration to maintain a stable power supply. 

In the US, there’s the question of how long policy support will last. A climate-focused president could, of course, return to the White House as soon as January 2029.

There’s also uncertainty over what industry groups (outside of coal producers) would be supportive of plans to revive the fossil fuel. Independent power producers may not be keen on the idea, the oil and gas industry would back gas instead and utilities are concerned about consumer impact, Capstone’s Price said.

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