President Trump last week issued executive orders designed to revive the use of coal in power plants, a practice that has been steadily declining for more than a decade.
But the effort is likely to fail, energy experts said, because the fossil fuel faces some critical hurdles. The power that coal plants produce typically can’t compete with cheaper, cleaner alternatives. And many plants that burn coal are simply too old and would need extensive and expensive upgrades to continue running.
“It will be very difficult to reverse this trend,” said Dan Reicher, an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration and a former climate and energy director at Google. “There are a variety of forces at work that don’t paint a very bright future for coal.”
Why has coal use declined?
Once the primary source of electricity in the United States, coal plants now produce just 17 percent of the nation’s power. The main reason is that natural gas, another fossil fuel, became abundant and cheap because of the shale fracking boom that began in the early 2000s. Use of renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, has also grown a lot.
Natural gas now provides about 38 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power produce about 25 percent, and nuclear energy generates about 20 percent.
Some regions, like New England, are scheduled to shut down their last coal power plants soon. The most populous state in the country, California, uses virtually no coal for electricity generation.
Coal has also been under pressure because burning it releases greenhouses gases responsible for climate change and pollutants that harm people and nature. To get around those concerns, Mr. Trump said, he will waive certain air-pollution restrictions for dozens of coal plants.
Where is coal still used?
In the Southeast and the Midwest, many utilities continue to generate electricity from coal plants. Companies such as Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority — the nation’s largest government-run power provider — are among the largest users of coal.
States that have a long history of coal mining are still very reliant on the fuel. They include West Virginia, which got 85 percent of its electricity from coal last year, and Kentucky, which got 67 percent, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Mr. Trump has directed the Energy Department to use emergency powers to keep unprofitable coal plants operating. The president said this was necessary to prevent power outages. He tried a similar strategy during his first term.
He has also issued orders to repeal any regulations that “discriminate” against coal production, to open new federal lands for coal mining and to explore whether coal-burning power plants can serve data centers used for artificial intelligence services like chatbots.
Peabody, the largest coal producer in the United States, said the world used more coal in 2024 than in any other year in history, a fact that it said highlighted the need for the resource to support expanding energy demands.
“To support our country’s growing needs for affordable, reliable energy, we believe the U.S. should halt coal plant retirements, use existing plants at higher utilization and restart shuttered coal plants,” Vic Svec, a spokesman for Peabody, said.
Can the Trump administration revive coal?
While federal policies can play a role, utilities and the state lawmakers and regulators that oversee them ultimately determine how much coal is burned in power plants.
The Edison Electric Institute, or E.E.I., a utility trade association, said in a statement that it agreed with the administration that the United States needed more sources of electricity, but it declined to speak for or against the use of coal.
“Demand for electricity is growing at the fastest pace in decades, and E.E.I.’s member electric companies are using a diverse, domestic and balanced energy mix to meet this demand while keeping customer bills as low as possible,” the institute said.
Some large utilities, like Xcel Energy, have been converting coal plants to solar farms, in part to take advantage of federal incentives created during the Biden administration. For example, in Becker, Minn., Xcel has been building a large solar and battery installation to replace its Sherco coal power plant. The company is converting another coal plant, in Colorado, to natural gas.
An Xcel spokesman, Theo Keith, said that the utility was reviewing Mr. Trump’s orders “to understand whether they could impact our operations,” but that in the meantime, it would work to provide clean energy at low cost to its consumers.
Conservative lawmakers in some states, like Texas, have proposed legislation to require greater use of fossil fuels to ensure adequate power supply and to meet rising demand from data centers, electric cars and heat pumps. But energy analysts expect that, if passed, such measures would primarily benefit natural gas, not coal.
Environmental activists said efforts to revive coal were misguided. They point out that states that use more coal tend to have higher electricity bills, more health problems and greater risk of power plant failures because of aging equipment.
“We’re really reversing decades of work here,” said Holly Bender, chief program officer at the Sierra Club, which has run a campaign called Beyond Coal to end the use of that fuel. “It’s obvious that Trump is trying to put his finger on the scale to keep coal open. But these are pieces of infrastructure that are at the end of their useful life.”