The Trump administration spends $ 625 million to relaunch the dying coal industry | Trump administration
The White House will open 13.1 million acres (5.3 million hectares) from public land to the operation of coal while providing $ 625 million to power plants in coal, the Trump administration announced.
The efforts were part of a series of initiatives from the Interior Department, the Ministry of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, aimed at relaunching the coal sector that due. Coal, the most polluting and costly fossil fuels has been rapidly decreasing in the past 30 years, with the United States by half reducing its production between 2008 and 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
“This is an industry that counts for our country,” said interior secretary Doug Burgum on Monday morning during a live press conference, alongside representatives of the other two departments. “This counts for the world, and it will continue to have importance for a long time.”
Coal -fired power plants provided approximately 15% of American electricity in 2024 – an steep drop of 50% in 2000 – EIA revealed that the growth of gas and green power displacing its use. Last year, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal in the United States for the first time in history, according to the International Energy Agency, which predicted that this could happen worldwide by the end of 2026.
Despite his role as a decrease, Trump has made the charcoal sector relaunch a second mandate in the midst of increasing energy demand due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence data centers.
“The Trump administration is determined to support the oldest and dirtiest energy source. It gives our taxes harshly won to the owners of coal-fired power plants that cost more than the new clean energy,” said Amanda Levin, director of the policies at the National Environmental Non-Prust Natural Resources Council. “This is a colossal waste of our money at a time when the federal government should spir along the new energy sources that can feed the AI boom and help reduce electricity bills for families in difficulty.”
The new investment of $ 625 million in the administration includes $ 350 million to “modernize” coal -fired power plants, 175 million dollars for coal projects that it claims will provide affordable and reliable energy to rural communities and $ 50 million to improve wastewater management systems to extend the lifespan of coal -bodies.
The efforts follow the previous initiatives focused on the Trump administration, which has mining leases with green lighting while accelerating extraction permits. He also extended the lifespan of certain coal -fired power plants, exempt from certain coal -fired power plants from EPA rules and has falsely affirmed that the emissions of these factories are “not significant”.
The movements have aroused the indignation of environmental defenders who note that coal pollution has been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the past two decades. A study estimated that coal emissions cost the Americans $ 13 to 26 billion a year in additional ER visits, cerebral vascular accidents and cardiac events, and greater prevalence and severity of the events of childhood asthma.
