President Donald Trump announced he’d be ramping up investments in coal across the country to help the nation’s fossil fuel industry.
Trump participated in an event Thursday in the Oval Office, where he said the federal government would be committing $700 million in funding for coal plants and other projects.
“Today, we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” Trump said.
The administration is going to be making investments in three areas, including saving coal plants with $425 million through the Defense Production Act (DPA), a Cold War-era law that allows the president to have authority over domestic industries.
Under the new DPA allocation, Trump said the money would be used to support 13 different coal plants, allowing them to “invest in upgrades that extend their operational life,” among other features.
Coal plants receiving funding are located in West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Coal mines supplying coal are in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wyoming, North Dakota and New Mexico, the White House said.
Environmental groups, long opposed to the use of coal, reacted to Trump’s announcement.
The National Resources Defense Council called the spending on coal a “stunning waste of taxpayer funds for a fuel that has been on decline for two decades.”
“First this administration tried to ban clean energy projects, and when that failed in the courts, it started cutting checks to pay off companies so they won’t produce cheap power,” Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at NRDC, said. “Now it’s taking our tax dollars and giving them to the owners of the oldest, dirtiest power plants — and subsidizing uneconomic new coal plant construction. This is going to mean higher bills and dirtier air. What a waste."
White House: Coal communities in Utah will benefit
A portion of the DPA funding, $75 million, will support the construction of a “long-delayed coal export terminal” in Oakland, California. This will allow the project to break ground over the summer and ship coal out by 2028. The West Gateway Terminal will move over $12 million tons and $1 billion worth of coal each year and is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs.
The coal exported out of the California port is expected to come from Western states like Wyoming and Utah.
“Coal communities in Wyoming, Utah, and across the West will benefit tremendously as American mines expand production and hire more workers to meet the growing demand from our allies abroad for American energy,” the White House said.
There will be nearly $200 million of Department of Energy grant funding helping to build two new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia, which would be the first new coal projects in the U.S. since 2013.
The White House said approximately 12,500 coal jobs “are being retained” thanks to the administration’s initiative.
Trump was joined by Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin, Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, among others, for the event Thursday.
They criticized the Democratic Party, green energy and wind energy throughout the announcement.
“You have so many alternatives, they talk about some, but there’s no real alternative,” Trump said. “China, by the way, last year built 52 coal plants, they built about two windmills, you know, the only time they build a windmill is when they’re trying to sell them to stupid people from the United States, the suckers.”
“Do you notice under four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the radical left Democrats in Congress, not a single permit was approved for a new coal mining project, but in over one year of our administration, we’ve already approved 76 permits to clean beautiful coal, last year, we prevented 17 gigawatts of coal-powered electricity from going offline, and that’s enough power for about 13 million homes,” he added later.
Burgum sharply criticized the Biden administration, saying they went down the path of “pursuing highly-subsidized, intermittent, weather-dependent sources of electricity.” He said the new projects would be developed on public land that was already set aside.
Wright pointed to severe weather impacts that left many Americans without power and how vital it is for the country to have a strong and robust energy industry. He hinted that a future announcement would come regarding nuclear energy.
“Our electricity gird essentially runs on gas, coal, and nuclear. Those are the three key sources. They’re the backbone of the American electricity grid. We’re in favor of seeing all three of them go,” he said. “You will see all three of them grow during this administration, and in fact, later today, before the sun goes down, you’ll see a big announcement in the nuclear space.”