The Great Coal Comeback?

President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress are giving coal a chance for a comeback by rolling back burdensome regulations, approving coal projects, and repealing green energy subsidies. If coal still proves to be uncompetitive against other energy resources, then it will have failed on its own merits. But coal’s future shouldn’t be determined by the anti-coal policy set up under the Biden administration—an agenda that Trump is now working to reverse.

Under the Biden administration, coal was doomed for failure. In 2024, its EPA issued a rule requiring coal plants to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2032—an impossible standard that would have forced nearly all coal plants into retirement. Because 90% of coal is used for electricity generation, this move would’ve artificially killed the fuel’s demand.

This summer, the EPA proposed to repeal this regulation to allow coal to remain part of the electricity mix.

Now, the Department of the Interior is actively approving multiple coal projects. Earlier this month, it approved a plan to allow a Wyoming mine to extract an additional 14.5 million tons of federally owned coal. It has also approved multiple mine expansions in Montana. These actions are necessary approvals that expand the supply to meet soaring projected electricity demand.

In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July, Congress cut Inflation Reduction Act subsidies to wind and solar projects that start construction after July 4, 2026 and are placed in service after the end of 2027. While these subsidies have already skewed electricity production to favor renewables at the expense of coal, the repeal will at least give coal a fairer chance to compete against other energy sources to provide electricity.

This framework offers the best chance for coal’s comeback.

But the government’s decision to keep a Michigan coal plant running—although understandable in the short term due to an energy emergency—is not a viable long-term strategy, since it only delays closures without laying the foundation for coal’s potential.

Likewise, the Big Beautiful Bill’s subsidy for metallurgical coal for steelmaking isn’t a long-term solution for coal revival. Subsidies are simply bandages over the root problem of coal’s decline—overregulation.

Now that the administration has reversed the anti-coal regulatory framework, whether coal can stage a comeback is up to utility and mining companies. While headlines often predict coal’s inevitable demise, coal remains a significant energy source and a vital part of electricity production throughout the world.

Nations continue to rely on coal as an affordable and reliable energy source to meet their increasing energy demands. Globally, the fossil fuel reigns as the leading source of electricity generation, at 35% of total energy. In America, coal provides 15% of total electricity generation. In India, the most populated country, coal provides 70% of the electricity supply.

China, the second largest economy, relies on coal for 60% of its electricity. In the first half of 2025, 21 gigawatts of coal capacity came online there—the largest first-half addition since 2015, according to a recent report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. During the same period, China initiated 46 GW of coal plant construction, but it retired only 1 GW.

Clearly, coal is important, so let’s see if the U.S. needs more coal or not within this new framework.

Coal is not asking Washington for special favors; it asks only for the opportunity to compete fairly with other energy sources. Succeed or fail, it must do so based on competition among energy sources—not on political favoritism for renewables over fossil fuels. That is the sensible energy framework for the 21st century.