Trump Energy Dept. Investing $625 Million in Coal Industry
“Coal just makes the world go round..it’s critical to our country.”
Energy Department Secretary Christopher Wright told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that the Trump administration plans to invest $625 million in the coal industry.
Wright claimed the move will “lower energy costs and enable the U.S. to win the global race for dominance in artificial intelligence.”
From Fox Business:
“We’re going to export more of that coal, we’re going to use it for American industry, particularly as we reindustrialize, and it’s going to continue to provide 15%-16% of our electricity and enable us to reindustrialize and win the AI race,” Wright said.
The $625 million investment includes $350 million to modernize coal plants with reliable electric power and capacity; $175 million for coal projects that are expected to bring cheaper, more reliable energy to rural communities; $50 million to upgrade wastewater management systems to extend the lifespan of coal plants and reduce operating costs; $25 million to enable coal power plants to operate on dual fuel; and $25 million to support investments that will maintain boiler efficiency and reliability when utilizing 100% natural gas.
Wright described coal as the “‘backbone’ of steel production, critical for cement production and necessary to feed the AI boom.”
The move would also align us with China and India.
In December, Leslie wrote about how coal usage reached a record high, primarily due to China and India.
Leslie stressed that coal usage is beneficial for energy security, as we need energy, especially electricity, to survive.
Someone tell those crazy environmentalists that they need that electricity to power their silly electric vehicles.
Wright agreed with Leslie:
“Coal just makes the world go round. And they’ve tried to strangle it, particularly the Biden administration, starting with the Obama administration,” Wright said, adding that coal has “a long future.”
“Let’s stop wishing it would go away,” Wright said of coal. “It’s critical to our country.”
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Comments
Thank f00k adults are back in charge.
Give up your electric cars and your Agentic AI and we can stop burning coal.
$625 million is a relatively small amount of money, but it will cause many millions of left wing heads around the world to explode in paroxysms of rage.
I like coal. I like oil. I like nuclear. It is the future, but people use their private money to invest in private corps to make a profit.
Government doesn’t ‘invest’. It merely spends tax dollars it takes – by force – from private money people earned.
Government doesn’t ‘invest’. It is a bad idea when democrats do it. It is a bad idea when republicans do it.
I pay a fortune in energy bills once a month, and spend the rest of the month fighting the BoPU against further rate hikes. Utilities have money, good credit, and bonds they can issue in order to ‘modernize’.
Government doesn’t invest. No. No. H3ll no. Don’t go down this road, DJT.
I’m sympathetic to this argument. But the other way to look at this money is as recompense for all the other money Joe Biden and Barack Obama wasted to deliberately damage the coal industry (and a lot of other industries) through bogus environmental regulation. and subsidizing their direct (and incompetent) competitors.
When you compare this money with that money, you have to admit that at least spending this money gets you more power. as opposed to spending money to get less power.
in re the two presidents you named:
please examine their bank accounts (as well as those of many in Congress)
they didn’t “invest” OPM i.e. taxpayer dollars in alternative energy
it was a money laundering operation
There is no money. The country is broke.
Thank you for clearly stating the position I hold as well. Get the government OUT of the marketplaces, and let them go back to simply protecting the rights of the individual, which is their intended function.
When they mess up a marketplace, they mess it up completely.. But they must also stop the nonsense regulations they’ve passed, and give up on classifying CO2 as a pollutant. The logical extrapolation of claiming CO2 as a pollutant is to condemn every living creature that breathes to death, since we’re all polluting the planet by exhaling.
Perplexity.ai: “President Trump’s administration recently took decisive action to roll back core federal regulations covering greenhouse gases, explicitly targeting the foundational “endangerment finding” that enabled the government to regulate carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act since 2009. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency plans to rescind the endangerment finding and associated vehicle and power plant emission standards, effectively undermining or halting federal regulatory authority over CO₂ as a greenhouse gas.”
The changes are moving along, and are in the required public comment period presently.
LOL
Coal is only dying because natural gas is cleaner, cheaper and frankly a lot more environmentally sound.
The same way coal displaced charcoal, fossil fuels replaced whaling some day natural gas will be replaced by something.
Could you imagine the government trying to save whaling today (pretending whales could easily replace lost populations which they can’t)?
I love Trump but the free market does actually know best about which industries are going to thrive in the future.
Coal is primarily dying because of the regulatory attacks it has suffered from the federal government. Which vastly increased its costs, and forced the closure of scores of coal fired electric power plants nationwide.
Nat. gas is indeed doing quite well, thanks to fracking. Weird thing is, this is the #1 reason why CO2 emissions in the US have been declining and yet D’s have continuously engaged in a jihad against fracking. Not that CO2 emissions have any effect whatsoever on “climate change”.
Fracking exists under a major regulatory regime to, natural gas is just cheaper.
It isn’t true in every country but in the United States we have the deep deposits we gained by fracking.
I would agree prior to fracking the coal industry was clearly cheaper and attempts by the government to artificially increase the price of coal was clearly showing.
However that was when coal was actually cheaper, fracking changed the picture.
What really needs to happen for electricity rates is streamlining the process for federal approval of nuclear power plants.
They seriously need to abolish the regulations and taxes put in place to cripple coal also.
We don’t need taxpayer funded “investments” in either coal or nuclear. What we need is for the federal govt to get the f*ck out of the way of private businesses that would be more than willing to build these power plants were it not for federal obstruction.
The insecurity alone is devastating. Its hard to justify multi-billion dollar investments when you know, for an absolute fact, that the next time a D wins a Presidential election that administration will do everything in its power to force the closure of your plant. Just on ideological grounds alone.
On the flip side, my company built a biomass power plant (translation: burns wood chips) a few years ago that is literally only profitable because of massive taxpayer subsidies (both federal and state). My objection was: “What happens if those subsidies are taken away?” was completely ignored. Fortunately for us, biomass is small enough to be below the radar of the current administration. Just glad we didn’t go all-in on offshore wind.