Trump to announce nearly $700 million for coal upgrades, exports

Donald Trump used the White House’s “Beautiful, Clean Coal” message to push nearly $700 million in federal support toward coal plants, export infrastructure and new construction, casting the spending as a national-security move even as coal’s role in the U.S. power mix keeps shrinking.

The plan leaned on the Defense Production Act, the 1950 law the administration said could be used to protect industrial resources tied to defense. In an April 20 presidential determination, the White House said coal mining, rail and barge logistics, export and domestic terminals, stockpiles and power-generation capacity were essential to national defense because they supported grid resilience and steady electricity, including the kind of baseload power demanded by AI data centers.

The money would be spread across several categories. One portion would provide $75 million for a coal export terminal in Oakland, California. About $425 million would go to 13 existing coal plants in 10 states. Nearly $200 million in Energy Department grants would help build two new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia and restart a coal plant in Maryland. The administration said the package would create thousands of jobs and save consumers $50 billion in energy generation costs. CBS News said the Alaska and West Virginia projects would be the first new U.S. coal plants built since 2013.

The broader pitch ran straight into the physical chemistry of coal combustion. The Environmental Protection Agency says fossil-fuel power plants emit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, carbon dioxide, mercury and other pollutants, with serious health and environmental impacts. The agency strengthened Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for existing coal-fired units in April 2024, underscoring that even modern controls can reduce, but not erase, the pollution profile of burning coal.

The political and economic backdrop is not flattering to the industry. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says coal once supplied more than half of U.S. electricity, but in recent years it has fallen to less than one-fifth. EIA also said generators planned to retire 12.3 gigawatts of capacity in 2025, with coal accounting for the largest share of those retirements, and U.S. coal exports fell 11% in the first half of 2025. Environmental advocates condemned the new push as pollution-intensive and out of step with climate goals, while experts and fact-checkers have repeatedly said coal may be cleaner than it used to be, but there is no truly clean coal.