Hard hats are back. So is “beautiful, clean” coal.
President Trump signed four executive orders on Tuesday to try to bolster the country’s declining coal industry, including the lifting of restrictions on mining and burning of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
In addition to waiving air pollution limits and other regulations on coal imposed by the Biden administration, Mr. Trump directed the Justice Department to go after states like California that have sought to tackle climate change by reducing the use of fossil fuels.
“I call it beautiful, clean coal — I tell my people to never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it,” Mr. Trump said in the East Room of the White House surrounded by dozens of mostly men in hard hats. “We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all.”
Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s directives.
Miners as backdrops
Mr. Trump has always loved the coal miner as a masculine symbol.
At the White House ceremony on Tuesday, he repeatedly referred to the burly men who surrounded him, joking about whether the stage could handle their collective weight and about arm wrestling several of them. He recalled how during his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, she was talking about job retraining for miners. “She was going to put them in a high-tech industry where you make little cellphones and things,” he said as he gestured daintily and laughed.
Coal itself is a strong fossil fuel, he said. “Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure and powerful form of energy,” Mr. Trump said.
“It’s almost indestructible,” he said. “You could drop a bomb on it and it’s going to be there for you to use the next day.”
What climate change?
Coal emits more carbon dioxide when burned than any other fossil fuel — making it a major contributor to climate change. More mining and burning of coal will add to the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet, leading to more frequent and deadly heat waves, drought, floods and rising sea levels as well as faster melting of the ice sheet in Greenland, the island Mr. Trump has said he wants the United States to acquire.
Scientists say major economies like the United States must sharply reduce their emissions — not increase them — to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Coal combustion also releases other pollutants, including mercury and sulfur dioxide, that are linked to heart disease, respiratory problems and premature deaths. And the activity of mining and the resulting coal ash from power plants pose environmental hazards.
There was no mention of any of those consequences of coal on Tuesday.
He ignored the biggest threat to coal: natural gas
Regulations that limit the amount of pollution from coal-burning power plants have made those plants more expensive to operate and have cut into the industry’s profitability. But the biggest reason for the decline in coal power over the past two decades hasn’t been “radical green” policies, as Mr. Trump said. It’s been cheap natural gas from fracking.
In the mid-2000s, American drillers perfected methods to unlock vast reserves of low-cost natural gas from shale rock. Electric utilities quickly realized they could replace coal with cheaper gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal when burned.
According to a 2019 study in The Rand Journal of Economics, energy markets and low natural gas prices accounted for nearly all the declines in coal plant profitability between 2005 and 2015, as well as the resulting retirement of hundreds of coal-fired power plants. “Environmental regulations had little effect on these outcomes,” the study found.
Mr. Trump, for his part, has said he wants to “drill, baby, drill” and continue cutting gas prices, which could put even more economic pressure on coal.
Boasting of law firm shakedowns
“Have you noticed that lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump?” the president asked the crowd at the coal event on Tuesday.
He was referring to the millions of dollars in pro bono legal services that some major law firms have offered the Trump administration after the president targeted or threatened to target them in executive orders.
One firm that was subject to an executive order — Paul, Weiss — cut a deal with the White House and promised concessions, including $40 million in pro bono work for Trump-friendly causes. Three other firms — Milbank; Skadden, Arps; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher — proactively agreed to their own deals with the White House.
On Tuesday Mr. Trump gave an indication where some those free legal services would be directed: fighting climate policies and helping the coal industry.
“We’re going to use some of those firms to work with you on your leasing and your other things,” Mr. Trump told coal leaders.
Coal stocks rose — but will the revival last?
Tuesday was a good day for the coal industry. The stock price of Peabody Energy, a mining company, rose 9 percent. Alliance Resource Partners, led by Joseph W. Craft III, a billionaire coal magnate who helped lead Mr. Trump’s fund-raising during the presidential campaign, was up nearly 5 percent.
But many experts are skeptical that Mr. Trump can do much to turn around the outlook for coal. “We believe Trump’s coal executive orders are unlikely to have a material impact on power or carbon markets, given the constraints on the use of emergency authorities and the orders’ symbolic nature,” wrote analysts at Capstone, a research firm. They called Tuesday’s bump in coal stocks “an overreaction.”
The average coal plant in the United States is more than 50 years old, and it is still often cheaper for utilities to use a mix of gas, wind, solar power and batteries to generate electricity. Those fundamentals, analysts say, will be hard to alter.