Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said during an interview with Bloomberg Television that “we’ve got to keep every coal plant open and if there had been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back.”
The secretary also reportedly told energy executives that the Trump administration would be supportive of massively increasing drilling and mining on federally owned land.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall signed onto an open letter to Burgum last Thursday praising the secretary’s statement. The letter forcefully argued coal will be a necessary part of addressing the American “energy crisis” and developing artificial intelligence.
Signed by a total of 23 state attorneys general including Marshall, the letter asserts that “America needs coal power to succeed.” Citing a recent study published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and supported by OpenAI, the attorneys general argue that only “increased coal-fired energy production” can help produce enough energy to keep America ahead of China in the development of artificial intelligence.
“From artificial intelligence to manufacturing, we need coal-fired power to remain globally competitive, support industries like steel and aluminum, and protect our national security,” Marshall stated in a Monday press release. “Without coal, we risk losing our technological edge and the prosperity that comes with it.”
“It’s time to unleash the power of American coal and ensure energy security for the future of our country,” he wrote.
Neither the letter or Marshall’s statement addresses the potential difficulties or expenses of expanding coal-based energy production.
While the Inflation Reduction Act, a major piece of legislation passed during the Biden administration, authorized several programs meant to accelerate the transition away from coal toward more sustainable sources of energy, as a source of energy coal has been on the decline for decades.
One likely contributing factor is that modern coal plants are more expensive per megawatt-hour than nuclear, geothermal and every listed type of renewable energy save offshore wind according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2023 report, “Levelized Costs of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook.”
The use of coal can also be a significant contributor to pollution, due to both the pollution caused by actually burning coal and the sometimes dangerous methane in coal mines.
Another study from the EIA found that while the U.S. still has “about 250 billion short tons” of recoverable coal reserves, it only has around 20 years worth of reserves at currently producing mines. So considerably increasing the share of American energy produced by burning coal would likely necessitate opening, or perhaps in some cases re-opening, coal mines.
Despite noting that preventing coal plants from closing down may help alleviate energy costs in the short-run, the CSIS report that the AGs’ letter cites actually concluded that “the delayed coal retirement strategy buys time but shifts the challenge to the future.” The report’s authors specifically suggested “nuclear, gas, solar, storage or geothermal” technologies as potential places to focus moving forward.
Marshall’s office did not respond to APR’s request for more information about the AG’s stance on opening new coal mines before the publication of this article. However, in the past Attorney General Marshall has criticized increases to national fuel economy standards, regulations that would require federally subsidized homes be more energy efficient, and negotiations trying to establish an international effort to curb plastic pollution.
