Summary
- U.S. officials hold largest coal sales in decade.
- Offering 600 million tons from public reserves.
- Sales near strip mines in Montana and Wyoming.
President Donald Trump's goals for businesses to extract more coal from federal lands and burn it for energy are reflected in the sales. However, according to an Associated Press data study, the majority of power plants that are fed by those mines intend to completely stop burning coal within ten years.
According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the NGO Global Energy Monitor, three other mines that are under Trump's consideration for expansions or new leases are also facing dwindling demand as power plants consume less coal and sometimes close.
A basic concern regarding the Republican administration's efforts to revitalize a long-declining industry that emits a lot of pollutants is brought up by these market realities: Who will purchase all that coal?
The administration's passionate embrace of coal, a major contributor to climate change, raises this concern. It also demonstrates the unpredictability of implementing those rules in markets where consumers of energy produce long-term choices that have significant effects on the planet's future as well as their own survival in a constantly changing political environment.
The Powder River Basin, which contains the most productive coal fields in the United States, is where the next lease sales in Montana and Wyoming will take place.
Officials claim that in spite of the government shutdown, they will continue starting Monday. Employees that handle permits and leases for fossil fuels were excluded from furlough by the administration.
Last year, Democratic President Joe Biden took action to prevent new coal leases in the area, arguing that they would exacerbate climate change.
Trump disagrees with scientists when he calls climate change a "con job" in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 23. He mocked wind and solar energy while praising coal as "beautiful" and boasting about the quantity of U.S. supplies. In 16 states that Democrat Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election, $8 billion in incentives for clean energy projects were being canceled, administration officials announced Wednesday.
On his first day in office in January, Trump issued an order that resurrected and expedited coal lease sales that had been shelved or stopped, disregarding greenhouse gas emissions.
The administration also sharply reduced royalty rates for coal from federal lands, ordered a coal-fired power plant in Michigan to stay open past planned retirement dates and pledged $625 million to recommission or modernize coal plants amid growing electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers.
"We're putting American miners back to work,"
Burgum said, flanked by coal miners and Republican politicians.
"We've got a demand curve coming at us in terms of the demand for electricity that is literally going through the roof."
An industry-wide decrease that started in 2007 is reflected in the AP's conclusion that power plants that are served by mines on public lands are consuming less coal.
Economists and energy specialists were not shocked. They questioned whether coal would ever take the lead in the electricity industry again. Questions concerning the future need for coal from public lands were not answered by representatives of the Interior Department.
However, extra electricity from planned solar and natural gas plants won't be up for a while. According to Umed Paliwal, a specialist in electricity markets at the University of California, Berkeley, Trump's moves may therefore temporarily boost coal.
How will these sales affect local employment in Montana and Wyoming?
The coal lease sale in Montana may help create jobs in coal mining operations and associated construction activities.
Montana has experienced slow to moderate job growth thus far in 2024, although opportunities in construction and energy infrastructure projects appear strong.
Resource-based industries, including mining, experienced a rough 2024 but efforts to expand new energy projects like coal mining leases could help.
In summary, overall coal mining could provide opportunities for stable employment work in communities dependent on resource extraction and associated support services. Overall, Wyoming is experiencing slight growth in employment with increases in the construction and mining industries.