Without coal, nothing will happen. This industry will prolong the demand for black gold

• Donald Trump's entourage points out that coal-fired power plants need to increase energy production to meet the demand of data centers and maintain grid reliability.
• In April, the US president issued an executive order directing his cabinet to find areas in the United States where coal-fired infrastructure is available to support AI data centers.
• They will also determine whether this infrastructure can be expanded to meet growing electricity demand from the country’s technology sector.

President Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as a power source for data centers.

It may be a bit of a paradox that the US president’s push for broader coal use conflicts with the environmental goals of technology companies. At least in the short term , however, the industry’s energy needs could extend the life of existing coal-fired power plants.

Coal-fired power plants could shoulder a greater burden of meeting U.S. electricity demand

As CNBC noted, Donald Trump’s push is a potential lifeline for coal companies—the industry is in retreat. About 16% of U.S. electricity production will come from burning coal in 2023, up from 51% in 2001.

James Grech, president and CEO of Peabody Energy, said coal-fired power plants could shoulder the bulk of U.S. electricity demand, including the multi-year growth of data centers. Peabody is one of the largest producers of the commodity in the U.S.

The tech industry is increasingly warning that fossil fuel generation will be needed to meet AI’s electricity demands . But the focus has tended to be on natural gas, which emits less CO2 than coal.

“To get the energy we need to the grid, we’re going to have to do all of the above approaches for some time,” Kevin Miller, vice president of global data centers at Amazon, told CNBC. “It’s not surprising that we’re going to have to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term,” Miller said.

Data centers will prolong coal demand at least temporarily

Data centers appear likely to prolong coal demand, at least temporarily, as utilities struggle to maintain grid reliability by delaying their decarbonization goals. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of about 39 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants, according to the National Mining Association.

"If we want to significantly increase electricity production in America over the next five to 10 years, we have to stop closing coal-fired power plants ," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNBC.

Coal is a stable energy resource in the US because it occurs in excellent geological conditions . This is confirmed by the fact that the Black Thunder mine in Wyoming, USA, is one of the largest in the world. It produced about 62.68 million tons of coal in 2023.