{"id":684485,"date":"2026-06-04T19:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T19:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/684485\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T19:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T19:41:09","slug":"trump-to-use-wartime-powers-to-dole-out-700m-to-coal-industry-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/684485\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump to use wartime powers to dole out $700m to coal industry | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> is to use a wartime presidential authority to hand $700m to coal-fired power plants in the US, the latest move by the president to bolster what he calls \u201cbeautiful clean coal\u201d despite it being the dirtiest of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Trump is using the Defense Production Act, a cold war-era statute used to accelerate American industrial output in times of national need, to provide grants to more than a dozen existing coal plants across the US, including facilities capable of exporting coal.<\/p>\n

The president has long been a champion of reviving the US\u2019s ailing coal industry, with Thursday\u2019s White House event featuring supportive governors and lawmakers from coal-rich states such as Wyoming and West Virginia.<\/p>\n

In the past year, the Trump administration has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> to the coal industry, signed orders<\/a> forcing ratepayers to pay extra<\/a> for ageing plants to stay open and dismantled<\/a> environmental rules that limit toxins from coal leaching into Americans\u2019 shared air and water.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s attempts to provide a cuddly rebranding to coal have even extended to creating a new mascot with giant eyes<\/a>, called Coalie, and gushing social media posts that include an image<\/a> of a lump of coal wearing sunglasses as if it were on the TV show Love Island.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a little standing order in the White House \u2013 never use the word \u2018coal\u2019,\u201d Trump said in a speech to the United Nations last year. \u201cOnly use the words \u2018clean, beautiful coal\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of such terminology, coal is not clean. It is the most carbon-dense<\/a> fossil fuel and therefore a leading cause of the climate crisis when burned. Coal also gives off tiny toxic particles that sicken miners<\/a> and trigger widespread respiratory and heart health problems across the US \u2013 research has estimated<\/a> that as many as 460,000 deaths in the US from 1999 to 2020 were attributable to air pollution from coal plants alone.<\/p>\n

Environmental groups strongly criticized the administration\u2019s latest aid for coal. \u201cIt is disgusting and reprehensible that the president of the United States is giving away our taxpayer dollars to deadly and expensive coal plants that will make Americans sicker and drive up electricity prices even more,\u201d said Patrick Drupp, climate policy director of the Sierra Club.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis handout betrays everything Donald Trump<\/a> promised and only serves his big coal buddies who stroke his ego and hand him shiny trophies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attempts to revive the coal industry, while at the same time seeking to stymie<\/a> the rapid growth of clean energy such as solar and wind, have so far floundered. The number of people working in coal has declined<\/a> by more than 90% in the past century, with more people now working<\/a> in Waffle Houses across the US than in coal.<\/p>\n

US coal production is currently less than half<\/a> of what it was in 2008, with coal recently declining as both a fuel for electricity<\/a> and as an input<\/a> for manufacturing materials such as iron and steel. Cheap, abundant gas has helped displace coal from power grids with even cheaper renewable energy also now taking off in the US despite the administration\u2019s efforts to kill it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s next, a taxpayer bailout to build new phone booths?\u201d said Kit Kennedy, a senior climate campaigner at the Natural Resources Defense Council, of the new round of support for coal. \u201cThis is going to mean higher bills and dirtier air. What a waste.<\/p>\n

\u201cPropping up coal billionaires with taxpayer money is one more way for the Trump administration to put polluters first and put the rest of us at risk,\u201d Kennedy added. \u201cThe best thing for the air, the climate and our utility bills is to let these plants retire peacefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coal industry applauded Trump\u2019s new order, arguing that ramped-up coal production will help the US meet a historic spike in electricity demand caused by the surging artificial intelligence sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoal generation shields consumers from the impacts of volatile energy prices and supply challenges,\u201d said Rich Nolan, chief executive of the National Mining Association, who added that coal offered a \u201cvital piece of a sound energy strategy designed to meet the challenge of today\u2019s AI-driven demand growth in the context of the conflict in the Middle East\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump is to use a wartime presidential authority to hand $700m to coal-fired power plants in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-684485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}