Coal Power is Rebounding in the U.S. Here’s How it Happened

In February, President Trump was presented a trophy proclaiming him the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.” He received it surrounded by more than a dozen coal executives and miners during a White House ceremony, just after ordering the Department of Defense to purchase billions of dollars’ worth of power from coal plants and announcing that the Department of Energy would allocate $175 million in funding for six projects to upgrade coal plants in four states.

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It’s a world away from a few years ago, when clean energy investments in areas that had seen polluting plants close were earmarked $4 billion in credits through the Inflation Reduction Act to help them transition away from coal economies—and it seemed as though coal was well on its way out. In nearly two decades, coal use across the country had declined rapidly. Before 2007, coal provided over 50% of U.S. electricity. In 2024, it provided only 15%—a 64% decline. By 2022, coal emissions had fallen 57% from their peak in 2005.

“The trends that we were seeing before the president took office for coal, there were climate regulations, there were other local pollution regulations, there were market forces like the lower cost of solar and wind. Natural gas, at least over the last couple decades, has been relatively cheap for the most part, so those were headwinds to coal,” says Noah Kaufman, senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. “All of those things have shifted in the past year.”

There’s no denying that the president has been a far more ardent champion of coal than his recent predecessors. In February alone, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also announced that it would roll back Biden-era pollution standards, meant to be implemented by 2027, thereby allowing coal-burining plants to release more heavy metals, like mercury and lead, into the air, along with repealing the endangerment finding, the legal framework for greenhouse gas emissions regulations.

But despite what Trump’s trophy says, the president can’t take all the credit. Other factors from rising natural gas prices to the explosion of data centers across the country are also responsible for breathing life back into the sputtering coal industry. 

The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public utility company, announced on Feb. 11 that it would no longer prioritize renewable energy, and would instead continue to keep coal plants slated for retirement in 2027 online. 

It’s a strategy utilities around the country are turning to to meet rising data center demand, says Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They’re trying to keep their aging and dirty plants on a little tiny bit longer. And I think that is in part driven by how rapid some of this load growth is expected to be.” 

Rising natural gas prices have also contributed to an uptick in coal use. Coal power generation surged 13% in 2025, compared to a 3% drop in electricity generated from natural gas. 

“Even though you have all of these other factors that probably play some role as well, like the electricity demand growth and the pullback of regulations, and now you have even some explicit orders from the Trump Administration to keep coal plants open that all probably feeds in, I do think still, that natural gas price is probably the single biggest driver,” notes Levin.

That doesn’t mean we’re going back to the way things were. “Coal is a much smaller player today, even with this rebound than it was in the past for the U.S.,” says Levin, who notes that, though energy demand grew by 3% in 2025, 77% of that demand was met with renewables. 

The rise of renewables though won’t necessarily make up for the environmental impacts that are a byproduct of coal generation. Last year, 71 coal plants sought exemptions to Biden-era amendments to a rule known as the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants (MATS), which gave plants until 2027 to strengthen limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutant emissions from coal-burning power plants and required them to continuously monitor emissions. (It’s these amendments that Trump halted last month.)

Read More: Trump Weakens Rules Limiting Harmful Air Pollution from Coal Plants

The plants that sought out exemptions were found to be more polluting, EPA data analyzed by Levin shows. “What we do know is, not only did coal generation increase, but some of the most potent public health-harming emissions from burning coal increased as well, and often at levels above the amount of generation that they’re producing,” says Levin. Exposure to pollution from coal-powered plants has been linked to an increased risk of a number of adverse health impacts—including asthma, lung cancer, and respiratory infection. “Those who took EPA up on its offer, that actively sought an exemption, are actually changing the way that they run their plants to be dirtier.”

While the Trump Administration has touted coal as a cost-effective solution to the country’s cost of living crisis, coal actually isn’t expected to lower electricity bills. In fact, it’s the most expensive power source. Research from the energy consulting group Grid Strategies found that the Trump Administration’s push to keep coal plants open could cost U.S. utility customers between $3-6 billion by the end of 2028.

Experts worry that piecemeal changes will cause further harm to communities with coal economies, as it prevents them from prioritizing and planning for their transition away from fossil fuels. The administration has used the Federal Power Act to keep plants that were set for retirement in operation, a tactic often used to keep plants online during temporary emergencies like hurricanes or heat waves. But officials have claimed that, this time, the emergency is an energy shortage. They’re only able to extend the order to keep plants open in 90 day increments. 

It’s a “disruptive way to do energy planning,” says Ben Inskeep, program director at Citizens Action Coalition, one of the groups challenging the extensions. “These are very short-term lifelines. These orders are 90 days, and it’s not doing anything to change the overall future outlook of the coal industry,” he adds. “This is really a very short term band-aid at best and at worst, what you’re doing is actually delaying these local communities from investing in replacement generation or finding alternative industries to attract to their communities.”