The Trump administration announced new measures aimed at propping up coal mines and power plants, but it’s not clear they’ll be enough to reverse the industry’s long-term decline. The Interior Department said it will open 13.1 million acres of federal land for new coal mines, and the Energy Department said it will provide $625 million for utilities to invest in extending the life of existing coal plants.
President Donald Trump has frequently championed what he calls “beautiful, clean coal,” despite mountains of evidence that coal is a chief contributor to carbon emissions and air pollution, and is increasingly uneconomic for power generation compared to gas or renewables.
To meaningfully change that calculus, the price of coal would need to fall by at least half, said Ben King, director for energy at the nonpartisan Rhodium Group. Several utilities with large coal power fleets, including Duke, NextEra, and Southern Company, declined to comment on how the new coal plan will change their agenda. “This funding is essentially cash for clunkers,” Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at the think tank Energy Innovation, told Semafor, “but without trading in the clunkers.”
