Submission by Kathleen Marquardt, American Policy Center

The Department of Energy is doing something smart for a change. It just announced plans to restore coal plants across the nation, allocating up to $100 million in federal funding. That sounds good to me—real energy—and maybe some of it will come from where I live, in Coalfield. The people here could use it.

In April, through an executive order “reinvigorating America’s beautiful clean coal industry,” it was announced that:

• President Trump believes coal is essential to our national and economic security.
• Agencies must rescind any policies that seek to transition the nation away from coal production or establish preferences against coal as a generation resource.
• The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) will assist agencies in adopting coal-related categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
• The administration will promote coal and coal technology exports, facilitate international offtake agreements for U.S. coal, and accelerate development of coal technologies.
• The Secretary of Energy will determine whether coal used in steel production meets the definition of a “critical material” and “critical mineral” under the Energy Act of 2020, and if so, add it to the relevant lists.
• The plan pushes for using coal to power new artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.

Coalfield was once the largest town in the county. When coal was killed, it shrank so badly that it’s now too small even to have a post office. Our mail is addressed to the next county over. We have two gas stations, a Dollar Store, and a lot of empty buildings that were once active businesses. Hopefully, soon they will be again.

The coal industry supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and adds tens of billions to the U.S. economy each year. America’s coal resources are vast, with an estimated value in the trillions of dollars. Coal-fired electricity generation is cleaner than ever, yet the previous administration waged war on coal. Coal will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand driven by a resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of AI data-processing centers. Supporting our coal industry will increase energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilize the grid, create high-paying jobs, support emerging industries, and assist our allies.

Thankfully, President Trump realized that to achieve his goal of bringing back cheap energy, he first needed to deal with Agenda 21/2030—the roadblocks to the sound science of clean energy. He needed to rid us of these programs designed to deny sound science and shut down free markets. In other words, to stop ignoring common sense and following Marxism into the ovens of hell.

President Trump stated:

“We will develop the liquid gold that is right under our feet, including American oil and natural gas, and we will also embrace nuclear, clean coal, hydropower—which is fantastic—and every other form of affordable energy to get it done.”

This executive order builds on actions President Trump has already taken to bring Americans the lowest-cost energy and electricity on earth. This includes:

• Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.
• Revoking Biden-era executive actions that hampered American energy production.
• Terminating the Green New Deal.
• Unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.
• Declaring a national energy emergency.
• Reversing the pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits.
• Cutting red tape to speed up the federal permitting process.

In his Energy Literacy Newsletter, Ronald Stein, energy consultant for the Heartland Institute, notes:

Today, oil, coal, and natural gas are the basis of over 80% of all global demand for products and transportation fuels that did not exist before the 1800s.

Policymakers setting “green” and “zero emissions” goals are oblivious to the reality that electricity came about after the discovery of oil. Without oil, there would be no products like wire, insulation, or computers to generate electricity.

So-called “renewables” only generate electricity—they cannot make anything. Everything that needs electricity is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, coal, or natural gas.

Stein continues:

The high price of electricity from wind and solar deployed at society scale illustrates an important cost-of-supply principle. Because everyone needs affordable and reliable energy—whether in the form of electricity, gasoline, diesel, aviation, or heating fuel—the higher the overall costs, the more damaging it is for those who can least afford it.

With this, it looks like we are finally returning to sound science, reason, and logic—things our government had locked in a closet but forgot to throw away the key. Thank you, President Trump, for digging until you found it and making good use of it. My town may never be what it once was, but if coal comes back to Coalfield, people can begin to grow a real town again. And that goes for many good places across the nation.

Let’s see the sheep become lions.