President Donald Trump signed several decrees on Tuesday which aim to stimulate national coal production, citing the need to meet the demand for growing electricity of artificial intelligence.
“We will quickly accelerate the leases for the exploitation of coal on federal lands and we will rationalize the permits, we will end the government's bias against coal and we will unlock the radical authorities of the Defense Production Act to invoice the extraction of coal in America,” Trump said during a signing ceremony to the White House.
Coal power plants stop across the United States because they have lost market share because of natural gas and have fallen into disgrace because of their carbon dioxide emissions.
“If we want to develop the production of American electricity significantly over the next five or ten years, we have (we) had to stop closing coal -fired power plants,” said Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Tuesday.
The Trump administration wants to extend electricity production by 25%, said Wright, who founded Freedom of energyAn petroleum service company in 2011. “This means that we need all the reliable, affordable and secure sources we have and the coal is a center of them,” said the energy secretary.
Coal stocks increased on the order of the president. Peabody energy won 9.2%, Basic natural resources increased by around 6.6%, and Ramaco Resources ended the day by 13.9%.
Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January that it would use emergency powers to accelerate the construction of power plants for data centers. The president said that factories can use the fuel they want, suggesting coal as a source of emergency energy.
A view of the drone shows the carbon prepared for transport, along the Kanawha river outside Charleston, Virginie-Western, March 19, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
It is not clear if the data centers will turn to coal as a fuel source because of its emissions. Coal emits more carbon dioxide than natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration, or EIA. The technological sector plays the main role in the construction of AI data centers and has focused on the use of renewable energies and, more and more, nuclear energy to achieve its environmental objectives.
About 16% of us electricity production came to burn the coal in 2023, Down 51% in 2001, According to EIA data. Natural gas moved the market share of coal in the last quarter of a century, stimulated by the shale boom.
In the United States, electricity generators plan to retire around 8 gigawatts of coal capacity in 2025, which represents almost 5% of the coal fleet operating in 2024, According to the EIA. The production of coal in 2023 was less than half of the total in 2008, According to the agency.
The largest network operator in the United States, Interconnection PJMwarned that it will find it difficult to meet the demand for electricity due to the planned pensions of power plants, most of which are fired in coal.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the energy name Information Administration.
