By Avi Salzman

The Trump administration plans to shovel taxpayer money to the coal industry in an attempt to revive the fossil fuel after years of decline. The news is reviving the stocks of coal producers, at least for now.

Peabody Energy stock was up 12% on Tuesday. Core Natural Resources was up 11%. Both are still down more than 30% for the year.

President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Tuesday afternoon that will designate coal as a "critical mineral" for national security, similar to minerals like uranium, according to a White House official. In a prior executive order, Trump authorized federal agencies to expand mining for minerals on federal land and offer potential loans and other federal assistance to companies that want to mine.

Trump says coal is necessary for America to meet electricity demand, as artificial intelligence consumes an ever-greater amount of electricity. He also wants to boost coal for use in steelmaking and increase coal exports to other countries.

The executive order comes as coal stocks have tumbled over the past year along with international coal prices. There's no guarantee that Trump can revive them. Natural gas is a substitute for coal, and last year natural gas got very cheap -- leading utilities to shift away from coal and toward gas. Coal piled up in inventories, and prices are down 35% from October.

"I don't think this order changes the facts that coal-fired power plants are old, expensive to run, and unlikely to operate very often or for many more years," Rob Gramlich, president of power consultancy Grid Strategies, said in an email. "The plants will likely be kept on line longer than believed a few years ago due to an uptick in power demand. But that is unrelated to this order, and doesn't mean the plants will operate outside of peak periods to maintain reliability."

Nonprofit organization Resources for the Future has found that keeping a large coal plant in operation could cost taxpayers $100 million in subsidies per year.

While Trump has been advocating for coal to power AI data centers, the biggest AI companies -- like Alphabet's Google and Microsoft -- have shown little appetite for it. They have environmental goals that involve transitioning away from dirty energy sources.

Coal was once America's largest source of electricity generation, but it has been on the decline for more than a decade. The U.S. produced 578 million short tons of coal in 2023, less than half of peak production in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. It has been replaced by natural gas, which is abundant and cheap in the U.S., and more recently by renewable electricity, which has gotten much cheaper. It's on the downswing in Europe too. Elsewhere, in countries like China and India, coal has stuck around longer than expected.

States and the federal government have passed laws and imposed regulations meant to curb coal use, given its health and environmental effects. Particulate matter emitted by coal has been linked to heart attacks and lung diseases. The closure of one Pittsburgh coal processing plant led to a 42% drop in heart-related emergency room visits in the surrounding area, according to a paper from last year.

Coal-fired power plants kill one American for every three coal-mining jobs they support, according to Resources for the Future.

The Trump administration has rolled back regulations on soot and other byproducts of coal use, and the new executive order will further direct government agencies to remove environmental regulations.

"Donald Trump's plan is as despicable as it is reckless and ill-conceived," said Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous in a statement.

Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com

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April 08, 2025 13:47 ET (17:47 GMT)

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