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Donald Trump to expand coal mining for powering AI data centres and steel production: Report
The executive order will state that the US will back to selling coal mining rights on federal land and that coal will get designated as a critical mineral.
US President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Tuesday to expand the mining and use of coal in the country to power the boom in energy-hungry data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) as well as for steel production.
The order is expected to state that the US will back in the business of selling coal mining rights on federal land and that coal will get designated as a critical mineral, according to a Bloomberg report.
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Trump had vowed to revive coal while campaigning for president last year, and the new order will include instructions to tap emergency authorities to reopen shuttered coal-fired plants.
US’s biggest mining companies such as Peabody Energy Corp., Core Natural Resources Inc. and Ramaco Resources, Inc will be attending the signing of the order, scheduled at 3 pm (Washington local time) in the East Room of the White House.
The order will also take down a high-profile barrier, which is a leasing moratorium first initiated under former President Barack Obama.
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This could encourage coal companies in the US to expand their holdings on federal land, which have declined over the past three decades, with them holding just 279 federal leases spanning nearly 422,000 acres as of 2023, according to Interior Department data.
This is down from 489 leases covering roughly 730,000 acres just 33 years earlier.
At the moment, coal accounts for around 15 per cent of power generation in the US, down from more than half in 2000, according to the report which cited data from the US Energy Information Administration. Since 2000, around 770 individual coal-fired units have shuttered.
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However, renewable power advocates have argued that Trump’s bid for US energy dominance also demands a wider array of options, due to the challenges in securing critical components needed to produce electricity from coal and natural gas, according to the report.
