James Courser, J.D. Candidate, 2027

Coal has recently become a focal point of controversy. It is woven into our history, yet as environmental pressures rise and demand falls, coal’s economics no longer add up. Can it still fit AI-era, energy-hungry future? The data suggest not, even as recent executive actions answer with an emphatic yes.

The administration’s push for coal is built on three main justifications: revitalizing the economy, safeguarding national security, and powering artificial intelligence (AI). As for the economy, the “Unleashing American Energy”executive order is meant to address reduced job creation and high energy costs stemming from regulations and the shift away from domestic energy sources. The order argues that “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations” have impeded resource development, resulting in high energy costs that harm consumers across transportation, heating, utilities, farming, and manufacturing sectors. To counter this, the order calls for unleashing domestic energy resources to “restore American prosperity.” The mechanism for this is a direct command for all federal agencies to review and eliminate any actions that “impose an undue burden” on domestic energy development, including fossil fuels.

Data backs the administration’s findings on energy cost and coal demand. U.S. coal consumption declined by 17.4% in 2023 and residential electricity bills have increased by almost 10% from January 2025 to August 2025. However, the administration’s interpretations of the data may not align with past studies. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics examined coal and electricity prices from 2004 to 2019 and did not find a clean correspondence—as coal share fell, electricity prices did not necessarily spike. Even if we accept the premise that greater coal availability leads to lower electricity prices and that overregulation is the problem, analysis shows that coal just isn’t as competitive. The American Action Forum found that while recent regulations have played a role in coal’s decline, the decline is a long one, starting in ~2007 and driven more by cheap natural gas and increased competition from renewables. Past deregulation appears to have little effect. The Congressional Research Service shows that despite regulatory rollbacks between 2017 and 2021, there was no improvement in coal plant retirements, coal employment, or production.

The Unleashing American Energy order also establishes that a reliance on foreign energy is a vulnerability “weakening our national security.” It sets a broad policy to protect national security by ensuring an abundant domestic supply of reliable and readily accessible energy, “with particular attention to…coal.” Building directly on this, the newest executive order, “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry,” places such importance on coal that it designates coal as a “mineral”—entitling coal to priority development on federal lands. According to the “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production” executive order, this means all relevant federal lands “shall provide for mineral production” through private commercial operations.

Agencies have repeatedly shown that the nation’s security does not hinge on coal. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation finds grid reliability depends on diverse resources and adequate reserves, not on preserving aging coal plants. The DoD itself has begun shifting the military toward microgrids, renewables, and on-site storage to harden bases against attack or blackout—precisely because centralized coal plants are a liability. This initiative would even allow DoD installations to “phase out fossil fuels in the energy mix over time” and “sever themselves completely from the national grid.”

Finally, the Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry order directly links the need for coal to AI. The nation’s “beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to…the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers.” The order further directs the Secretaries of the Interior, Commerce, and Energy to identify regions where “coal-powered infrastructure is available and suitable for supporting AI data centers” and to assess the potential for “expanding coal-based infrastructure to power” them.

While AI’s energy footprint is undeniably growing, current trends show that clean energy, not coal, is the remedy for this increased demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that clean energy is already meeting this extra demand as it accounted for over 80% of total growth in electricity generation in 2024. The EIA goes as far as to say that low-emissions sources are “expected to meet all of the world’s additional electricity demand over the next three years.” AI technology companies themselves are already moving away from coal to meet their electricity needs with the S&P Global report showing a 66.4 percent increase in contracted clean energy capacity between its 2024 and 2025 updates.

Although the administration’s goals of growing the economy, ensuring security, and supporting the electricity needs of new technology are valid, empirical evidence and market realities show that its chosen policy instruments may not be. The central question is not whether coal will, or should, remain dominant; rather, it is how much longer the U.S. can sustain a declining industry. When the data indicate a lost battle, policymakers need to explore forward-looking solutions, not just extend special protection for the past.