President Trump signed four executive orders Tuesday aimed at expanding the mining and use of coal in the United States, in an effort to revive the struggling industry.
Flanked by dozens of miners in white hard hats at the White House, Mr. Trump said he was instructing the Justice Department to identify and fight state policies and regulations that were “putting our coal miners out of business.”
He added that he would “guarantee” that future administrations could not adopt policies harmful to coal. “We’re going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups and downs of the world of politics,” Mr. Trump said, but he did not provide details.
The orders direct federal agencies to remove barriers to coal leasing and mining, loosen environmental reviews of coal projects and explore whether coal-fired electricity could help power new A.I. data centers. They called for accelerating permitting and funding for new coal projects. And they directed that federal lands be opened to more mining.
“This is a very important day to me because we’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned despite the fact that it was the best, certainly the best in terms of power, real power,” Mr. Trump said.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, have all spoken about the importance of coal. The two cabinet members sat in the front row at the White House ceremony, which was attended by members of Congress from Wyoming, West Virginia and other coal-producing states.
“Beautiful clean coal,” Mr. Trump told the gathering. “Never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it.”
Coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels when burned, and accounts for roughly 40 percent of the world’s industrial carbon dioxide emissions, the main driver of global warming. It releases other pollutants, including mercury and sulfur dioxide, that are linked to heart disease, respiratory problems and premature deaths.
Over the past two decades, the use of coal has fallen precipitously in the United States, as utilities have switched to cheaper and cleaner electricity sources like natural gas, wind and solar power. That transition has been the biggest reason for the drop in U.S. emissions since 2005.
It is unclear how much Mr. Trump could reverse that decline. In 2011, the nation generated nearly half of its electricity from coal; last year, that fell to just 15 percent. Utilities have already closed hundreds of aging coal-burning units and have announced retirement dates for roughly half of the remaining plants.
Over the past year, growing interest in artificial intelligence and data centers has fueled a surge in electricity demand, and some utilities have decided to keep at least some coal plants open past their scheduled closure dates. And as the Trump administration moves to loosen pollution limits on coal power — including regulations applied to carbon-dioxide and mercury — more plants could stay open longer, or run more frequently.
In discussing coal plants last month, Mr. Burgum said: “These are clean coal plants, they’ve been the most regulated segment of our energy industry. I applaud them if they’re still open and we need them to stay open.”
A major coal revival seems unlikely, some analysts said.
“The main issue is that most of our coal plants are older and getting more expensive to run, and no one’s thinking about building new plants,” said Seth Feaster, a data analyst who focuses on coal at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a research firm. “It’s very hard to change that trajectory.”
During his first term, Mr. Trump suggested that he would use emergency authority to force uneconomical coal plants to stay open rather than retire. But that idea triggered a fierce blowback from oil and gas companies, electrical grid operators and consumer groups, and the administration abandoned the idea.
Ultimately, Mr. Trump struggled to fulfill his first-term pledge of rescuing the coal industry. Despite the fact that his administration repealed numerous climate regulations and appointed a coal lobbyist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, 75 coal-fired power plants closed, and the industry shed about 13,000 jobs during his presidency.
Coal’s decline continued under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who sought to move the country away from the fossil fuel altogether in an effort to fight climate change. Last year, his administration issued a sweeping E.P.A. rule that would have forced all of the nation’s coal plant to either capture and bury their carbon dioxide emissions or shut down by 2039.
This year, upon returning to office, Mr. Trump ordered the E.P.A. to repeal that rule. And Trump administration officials have repeatedly warned that shutting down coal plants will make the nation’s grid less reliable. Unlike wind and solar power, coal plants can run at all hours, making them useful when electricity demand spikes.
“We are on a path to continually shrink the electricity we generate from coal,” Mr. Wright told Bloomberg Television in February. “That has made electricity more expensive and our grid less stable.”
Some industry executives who run the nation’s electric grids have also warned that the country could face a greater risk of blackouts if too many coal plants retire too quickly, especially since power companies have faced delays in bringing new gas, wind and solar plants online, as well as in adding battery storage and transmission lines.
Yet coal opponents say that keeping aging plants online can bring with it steep costs. Earlier this year, PJM Interconnection, which oversees a large grid in the Mid-Atlantic, ordered a power plant that burns coal and another that burns oil to stay open until 2029, four years past their planned retirement date, to reduce the risk of power outages. The move could ultimately cost utility customers in the area of more than $720 million.
“Coal plants are old and dirty, uncompetitive and unreliable,” said Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “The Trump administration is stuck in the past, trying to make utility customers pay more for yesterday’s energy. Instead, it should be doing all it can to build the electricity grid of the future.”
