The changes offered by the Trump administration for the coal industry

By John Raby and Leah Willingham, Associated Press

Charleston, W.VA. (AP) – The administration of President Donald Trump has proposed several changes that would affect the American coal industry in difficulty.

Trump published decrees this month to authorize mining on federal land. He used his emergency authority to allow older coal power plants to retire in order to continue to produce electricity to meet growing demand in the growth of data centers, artificial intelligence and electric cars.

The Republican President has also granted nearly 70 older coal electricity power plants an exemption of two years of federal requirements to reduce the emissions of toxic chemicals.

Trump’s government efficiency team, led by Elon Musk, has made plans earlier this year to end leases from 34 US US security and health offices in 19 states.

The decades of coal decades

The coal industry has once provided more than half of the American electricity production. But it has been declining decline for decades while operators have gone bankrupt and public services have installed more renewable energies and converted coal -fired power plants to be supplied by cheaper and cleaner natural gas.

American coal production was 1 billion tonnes in 2014 and fell to 578 million tonnes by 2023, the last year available, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Coal employment culminated nationally in the 1920s when there were about 900,000 minors. It was around 350,000 in 1950 and decreased regularly since 1980. After the coronavirus pandemic, employment rebounded from 2022 to 2023, increasing from 4.2% to 45,476. The Virginie-Western employed the most minors to 14,000, followed by Kentucky at 5,000. Virginie-Western (165) and Kentucky (112). Despite only 15 mines, Wyoming was the most producing coal state due to more accessible mechanization and coal.

Mining deaths in the past four decades have dropped considerably. There have been 11 deaths or less in each of the last five years, according to MSHA.

Targeting msha

MSHA is responsible for applying mine safety laws to us. It is necessary to inspect each quarterly underground mine and each surface mine twice a year. The cuts proposed by the so-called ministry of efficiency of the Musk government would require MSHA inspectors to travel further to a mine, and this could mean less in-depth inspections, said Jack Spadaro, a long-standing investigator of mine security and an environmental specialist who worked for this agency.

According to the DOGE website, the end of MSHA leases should save $ 18 million. It is not clear if the positions of the inspectors and other jobs of these offices would be transferred to other facilities.

Seven of the MSHA offices for the closure are in Kentucky and four are in Pennsylvania. Virginia-Western is one of the states with two targeted offices. The repair and application installations of the refurbishment and application installations of the fence of the surface fence in Lexington, Kentucky, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, reduced the national footprint of an agency created during the Carter administration to restore the land damaged by the extraction of bands and recover abandoned and damaged mine land.

A recent examination of the data accessible to the public by the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center indicates that nearly 17,000 health and safety inspections were carried out from the beginning of 2024 to February 2025 by the MSHA staff in the cutting block installations.

What other uses is there for coal?

Industry defenders have long argued that there are other uses for coal, some of which use cleaner technology.