Trump's Coal Push to Counter China: Authorization and Potential Risks

Trump Campaign to Promote U.S. Coal Mining Riles Economic and Environmental Interests

The administration of President Donald Trump has released plans to increase U.S. coal mining as part of a proposal to increase domestic energy production and counterbalance China's increasing economic influence in the energy sector. It follows an executive order and a broader initiative to increase the production of fossil fuels following increased criticism of its economic and environmental implications.

Trump recently tweeted announcing his intention to sell what he called "beautiful, clean coal." How this will be accomplished is unclear, but the order is a part of the overall plan by the administration to reduce reliance on foreign energy sources and boost domestic coal production.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has sought to shore up coal. Trump's presidency involved him signing an executive order invoking a national energy emergency, which ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ramp up the production and release of fossil fuels. Last month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright confirmed that the administration is crafting a "market-based" fix to prevent the shutdown of U.S. coal-fired power plants.

Currently, coal provides about 15% of US electricity, a staggering decline from over 50% at the start of the century. Strict environmental regulations are one major factor in the decline since they have made it progressively challenging for coal plants to maintain a profit margin. Approximately 120 coal power plants will shut down within the next five years, says America's Power, an association of utility firms and coal producers like Peabody Energy Corp and Core Natural Resources Inc. This is largely due to these policies, which have made it more expensive to operate coal power plants.

Despite all of these obstacles, Trump's fresh executive orders constitute a step back towards undoing restrictions on extracting fossil fuels. The orders are able to do away with Biden's clean pollution rules on energy plants as a measure to eliminate coal as power in favor of cleaner alternatives. The step's critics, who include ecologists, warned that it would be apocalyptic in its impact on U.S. climate goals since a quarter of America's carbon emissions result from electricity production.

Coal industry groups, however, assert that the steps are necessitated in order to save American jobs in mining and power industries. The miners welcomed the move of reversing the deregulation actions as an opportunity to grant some breathing room to hard-pressed coal companies.

Even though coal would be temporarily exempted, overall the trend of U.S. power production reserves natural gas the same position as a greatest winner with expanded power production. Eulogized for being cleaner compared to coal, natural gas now constitutes a majority of majority sources of U.S. power production in the latest history. Analysts predict it will continue to be a focus area in producing future electricity needs despite a brief-run boost in coal production.

The broader implications of Trump's energy policy are unclear. As tremendous as the near-term economic stimulus will be for certain industries, however, is the danger it poses to long-term environmental degradation and the country's capacity to meet its climate commitments. As the sense of urgency intensifies to address climate change, the place of fossil fuels in America's future is an extremely contentious matter of debate, with the role of coal in America's energy mix increasingly marginal.

At the same time, energy experts note that America will continue to rely on natural gas to meet its ever-growing energy requirements, and coal's contribution in the mix will decline even more in the future. Despite attempts by the administration to increase the production of coal, it doesn't seem even remotely possible that coal will be able to rule the American energy market once again.

While the U.S. grapples with these energy concerns, debate regarding fossil fuels and their impact on the economy and the environment will necessarily continue. As energy demand grows, the U.S. will have to reconcile economic growth with the need to discover renewable energy sources that mitigate fears regarding climate change.