The coal era is over, but President Donald J. Trump never received the memo. On April 8, he released an executive order mandating an increase in coal production. “Federal policy does not discriminate against coal production or coal-fired electricity generation,” the order proclaimed.
The executive order directed the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and Energy to submit a report to Trump identifying coal resources and reserves on federal lands. The order directs the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture to “prioritize coal leasing and related activities…as the primary land use for the public lands with coal resources identified in the report.”
The order also instructs the Secretary of the Interior to end the Jewell Moratorium. In 2016, President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, ordered the Bureau of Land Management to establish a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands. In 2017, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, rescinded the moratorium. President Biden reinstated it in 2021.
The U.S. Coal Capacity
Estimating how much coal exists in the U.S. is difficult because the U.S. Geological Survey has not conducted a comprehensive national assessment since 1974. However, the Energy Information Administration published three measures of current coal resources in 2023. The Demonstrated Reserve Base measures the sum of coal in measured and indicated resource categories of reliability. The DRB is an estimated 470 billion tons. Around 69 percent of that is underground mineable coal.
The EIA’s Estimated Recoverable Reserves includes mineable coal and current mining technology. The ERR is at around 250 billion short tons, with 58 percent underground mineable coal. The recoverable reserves at producing mines are an estimated 12 billion short tons, with 53 percent surface mineable coal.
The EIA estimated that the recoverable coal reserves would last around 422 years, as of U.S. coal production in 2022. However, the recoverable reserves at producing mines would only last around 20 years. The current U.S. coal fleet has about 415 individual power plants with an electric generating capacity of 183,000 megawatts. While the U.S. has the world’s largest coal reserves, coal supplies only 16 percent of electricity. At the end of 2015, coal supplied 26 percent of the country’s electricity.
Bring Coal Back Is Not Feasible
“Coal is cost-effective,” Trump’s order proclaimed. What he doesn’t take into account is the decline of coal. There has been a 40 percent decline in coal use over the last decade, driven mainly by lower natural gas prices. And ending the moratorium on coal leasing on federal lands is “unlikely” to make coal more competitive, according to the Brookings Institution.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis expects the use of coal for electricity to continue to decline for the rest of this decade. The group estimated that by 2030, 63 percent of the peak total coal-fired capacity will be closed. It is also estimated that coal capacity in operation by the end of 2030 will shut down by 2040.
Natural gas is deliverable via pipelines. Coal relies on trains, barges, or trucks. All of them use diesel fuel. Increases in diesel fuel prices affect the cost of transporting coal, adding to the final cost of delivered coal. Transportation accounted for 41 percent of the average cost of coal delivered to power plants. The EIA projects that coal prices will increase each year through 2050.
A Dirty Fossil Fuel
Trump’s executive order described coal as “clean.” The 40 percent decline in coal-fired electricity accounted for 75 percent of the reduction in carbon dioxide from energy generation. In other words, coal is dirty as hell.
Not only does coal increase carbon emissions, but coal combustion also releases hazardous substances. Those substances pose a risk to our health. A study published last year looked at the effects of coal transported by uncovered rail cars in California’s Bay Area. Researchers found a significant increase in particulate matter pollution (PM 2.5) in dense urban populations. Researchers also found increases in mortality, hospitalization for cardiovascular and respiratory disease, asthma exacerbation, work loss, and days of restricted activity.
Donald Trump’s bizarre doubling down on what he calls “beautiful clean coal” is an enormous step backward, leaving what should be America’s leadership in the ongoing energy transition in the dirty, toxic coal dust.
