Trump Orders Pentagon to Buy Coal. It’s an Energy Emergency

When everything is an emergency, nothing is.

Coal Emergency

Please note the New Emergency Forcing Pentagon to Buy Coal.

President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to purchase more coal-based electricity, drawing the U.S. military into his campaign to subsidize a heavily polluting fossil fuel that is struggling to compete in the marketplace.

Trump announced the move at a White House event Wednesday where he also said his administration would spend taxpayer money to upgrade coal plants in four states.

The executive order Trump signed Wednesday, which does not specify how much the Pentagon will spend, directs defense officials to preference coal in long-term energy contracts. It states that “coal is essential to our national and economic security” and that it is “imperative” for the Pentagon to “prioritize the preservation and strategic utilization of coal-based energy assets.”

The order invokes the energy “emergency” declared by the White House early last year, as well as an executive order from April directed at strengthening the U.S. power grid. White House officials have argued that the national power crunch — driven in large part by the proliferation of data centers — has created a national security emergency.

In addition to the Pentagon directive, Trump also said Wednesday that his administration will use funds from the Department of Energy to pay for upgrades at coal plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia “to keep them online and keep those plants open.”

The administration’s unprecedented actions to force power companies and consumers to subsidize coal plants that were otherwise headed toward retirement have unleashed a fierce backlash from state attorneys general, utility industry officials and ratepayer advocates in several states.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly invoked little-used emergency powers to cancel the planned retirement of five large coal facilities. The orders, which are being challenged in court by at least 15 states, effectively command power companies to scrap closure plans and invest whatever is required to keep the plants operating. Those costs are generally passed along to utility ratepayers through higher bills.

The result, according to Ari Peskoe, an energy scholar at Harvard University, has been to “raise energy bills while providing negligible benefits to consumers.”

“Each of the five plants were slated to retire because they are expensive to operate and there are cheaper sources of power available to meet consumers’ needs,” Peskoe said. “Plant owners aren’t just flipping a switch to turn the plants back on — they are spending millions on maintenance, renewing expired coal contracts and rehiring workers.”

The owners of a Colorado coal plant the administration has ordered to remain open have argued that the Trump administration is illegally forcing them to keep operating. Two Colorado utilities, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority, said in a federal regulatory filing last month that the directive amounts to an unconstitutional taking of private property. “The costs of compliance fall directly on their members and customers, who must now pay,” said the filing, which disputes the Energy Department’s finding that the plant is crucial to avert an energy shortage in the Western U.S.

Fifteen states are seeking to block the Trump administration’s orders to keep coal plants open by suing to overturn its declaration early last year of an “energy emergency,” which the Energy Department is using to justify the directives.

The cost to ratepayers of keeping the plants open is considerable. The owner of the J.H. Campbell complex, a western Michigan coal power generating plant ordered to remain open by the administration, has said it is costing $615,000 per day. An analysis by the research group Grid Strategies found that if the administration were to expand its directive to the dozens of coal plants scheduled for retirement by the end of 2028, the cost would exceed $3 billion annually.

The cost of the White House directive to the Pentagon to buy coal is unclear, as the administration did not immediately offer data on the Defense Department’s existing energy contracts and how much more it would be authorized to spend to increase its coal electricity use. But it will come at a price, said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies.

“Taxpayers will have to pay for whatever DOD is buying,” he said.

Political Miscalculation

A little more than two decades ago, coal generated most of the country’s electricity. Today it contributes 15 percent. Competition from cheaper sources of energy, especially natural gas, made that happen — not government. Non-carbon energy sources such as solar and wind, which together already eclipse coal’s output, have also cut into the business.

The political calculus here is also off. In 2024, the entire coal mining industry employed fewer than 43,000 people in a country with a 172 million person labor force. Is subsidizing those jobs worth the anger that Americans will feel as their utility bills tick upward?

It’s an Emergency

To protect coal, Trump is willing to drive up utility bills for everyone.

Coal is considered the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. It releases significantly more greenhouse gases, air pollution (sulfur dioxide, mercury), and solid waste (coal ash) per unit of energy compared to oil or natural gas.

Paying money to keep open pollution-producing plants that the free market wants to close is downright idiotic.

To repeat … Two Colorado utilities, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority, said in a federal regulatory filing last month that the directive amounts to an unconstitutional taking of private property. “The costs of compliance fall directly on their members and customers, who must now pay,” said the filing, which disputes the Energy Department’s finding that the plant is crucial to avert an energy shortage in the Western U.S.

Somehow it’s an emergency to do this.

A more realistic emergency would be to shut the coal plants down sooner. The free market approach is to let them go naturally.

On the Energy Front

January 5, 2026: How Long Will it Take to Ramp Up Production of Venezuelan Oil?

Here are responses from AI, the WSJ, and an energy investor who posts on my blog.

January 5, 2026: Trump Is “Probably Inclined to Keep Exxon Out” of Venezuela

Trump has a hissy fit because Exxon called Venezuela uninvestable.

January 25, 2026: US Will Not Offer Security to Oil Firms in Venezuela, So Why Go?

Is the US going to run Venezuela or not? Maybe it runs itself.

February 2, 2025: Trump Claims “We Have All the Oil We Need” True or False?

By volume, we are reasonably close. But by grades of oil US refiners need, we aren’t. Here are the details.

Instead of promoting more energy from Canada, Trump marched into Venezuela to steal its oil.

Click on the preceding link for a discussion of Canadian oil.

US energy policy is now best described as reckless.

Addendum

My opening statement was “When everything is an emergency, nothing is.”

I like this phrase better.

“Turning everything into an emergency creates real emergencies.”