President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order designed to bolster the coal industry.
Conservatives had long claimed burdensome permit requirements, regulations, and undue fiscal pressure were unjustly hindering the coal industry.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin commended the executive order, claiming it will “unleash American energy.”
“Under President Trump, we will unleash energy dominance,” said Administrator Zeldin. “Today’s EO will empower American energy (including beautiful, clean coal) to drive down costs, increase domestic supply, and improve our grid security as we pioneer the path to become the AI capital of the world.”
The executive order included directives to end the coal leasing moratorium, remove regulatory burdens for coal mines, and provide royalty rate relief.
Coal amounts to 16.2% of the US’ total energy production, the US’ fourth largest energy source.
In the last decades, the US’ reliance on coal has dwindled and coal jobs have been significantly reduced.
During former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama’s administrations, coal mining was discouraged as executive agencies’ rule-making authority was leveraged to frustrate coal operations.
For example, a coal leasing moratorium, i.e., a ban on coal mining on public lands, was enacted by President Obama and continued by President Biden.
Democrats have derided coal as an excessively polluting energy source and have enacted policies to guide the US’ energy sector away from it.
Conversely, Trump and Republicans campaigned on removing barriers hindering the coal industry’s free competition in the marketplace.
“Today, we took historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers,” said Trump via Truth Social. “We're ending Joe Biden's war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all, and we're going to put the miners back to work!”
