KING COALTrump Is Keeping Coal on Life Support. How Long Can It Last?
Heading into President Donald Trump’s second term, coal looked like an industry nearing the end of its life. In 2025, however, regulatory rollbacks and surging power demand helped buoy an industry in trouble.
Heading into President Donald Trump’s second term, coal looked like an industry nearing the end of its life. Utilities planned to retire more than half of the nation’s coal-fired power plants by 2028, no new facilities were coming online, and production had been flat for years.
Trump’s first year back in office has given the industry an opportunity to retrench. The president is an avowed supporter of coal, and his Department of Energy has repeatedly intervened to prevent plants from shutting down. At the same time, a Trump-supported boom in the construction of artificial intelligence data centers has led to a surging need for power, prompting many utilities to postpone coal facility closures.
The combination of federal intervention and rising energy demand may have stalled coal’s decline, at least for the moment. Consumption increased 13 percent last year, reversing a long downward slide and causing a bump in domestic carbon emissions. Of the 11 coal-fired plants slated for retirement last year, just two shuttered. But one of them may return: A Utah facility closed in November after losing its primary customer, but the legislature hopes to save it by finding another buyer. Many of the utilities that committed to shutdowns over the next two years have abandoned those plans.
The administration has combined this effort to prop up coal with delays and rollbacks of rules governing pollution and miner safety, actions central to its heavily pro-coal agenda of “Unleashing American Energy.”
Still, these efforts may not reverse a decline that started nearly 20 years ago. The nation’s aging coal plants — more than 200 in all — are increasingly expensive to run, even as methane, more commonly known as natural gas, and solar become cheaper and more abundant. And although the Trump administration has promised to boost employment, layoffs have continued amid the industry’s ongoing contraction.
Coal may see a short-term reprieve, but experts see little hope of a lasting revival. “When you have to get the government to step in to put its thumb on the scale in order to help your industry,” said Sean Feaster of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, “it’s a sign that you’re not particularly competitive, right?”
