The Trump administration will invest $625 million in the coal industry and reopen 13.1 million acres of federal land in states such as Montana, Wyoming, and Tennessee to coal mining to support President Donald Trump’s “Beautiful Clean Coal” initiative.
The Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior announced their plans Monday, in accordance with executive orders signed by the president earlier this year.
The $625 million includes $350 million in funding for recommissioning and modernizing coal plants, $175 million for coal power projects for rural communities, and $50 million for waste management systems to extend coal life, among other innovations.
“Beautiful, clean coal will be essential to powering America’s reindustrialization and winning the AI race,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a press release. “These funds will help keep our nation’s coal plants operating and will be vital to keeping electricity prices low and the lights on without interruption. Coal built the greatest industrial engine the world has ever known, and with President Trump’s leadership, it will help do so again.”
The initiatives follow the directive of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” passed over the summer.
“President Trump promised to put American energy workers first, and today we’re delivering,” Secretary of the Interior Burgum said in a press release. “By reducing the royalty rate for coal, increasing coal acres available for leasing, and unlocking critical minerals from mine waste, we are strengthening our economy, protecting national security, and ensuring that communities from Montana to Alabama benefit from good-paying jobs. Washington doesn’t build prosperity, American workers and entrepreneurs do, and we’re giving them the tools to succeed.”
As part of the plan, the Bureau of Land Management made the millions of acres available for use and will lower royalty rates that companies need to pay to extract coal. The EPA will also repeal a complex web of regulations that have stifled the coal industry, which has been declining since 2005.
The president made it a goal of his second term to revitalize the coal industry.
An executive order from April initiated the president’s goals, explaining that “In order to secure America’s economic prosperity and national security, lower the cost of living, and provide for increases in electrical demand from emerging technologies, we must increase domestic energy production, including coal.” Coal is both abundant and cost effective, according the language in the executive order.
While former President Joe Biden was in office, his administration ended all coal leasing in Montana and Wyoming — the top coal producers in the United States. The Biden Environmental Protection Agency also placed strong pollution rules on American coal plants, requiring the installation of carbon capture technology within the decade.
“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful clean coal once and for all,” Trump said in April.
With the creation of these initiatives, coal will continue to account for 15-16 percent of American electricity and will play a significant role in the United States continuing to grow its artificial intelligence sector, Wright said on Fox Business.
“Everybody likes to say, ‘drill baby, drill,'” Burgum said at a news conference Monday. “I know that President Trump has another initiative for us, which is ‘mine baby, mine.'”