President Donald Trump is expected to take executive action on Tuesday to ramp up America’s coal production and usage.
Bloomberg News reported on the expected action, which will be taken with the aim of bolstering energy resources for data centers as the artificial intelligence (AI) race ramps up:
In an executive order Trump is set to sign Tuesday afternoon, the president will direct a number of steps by the federal government meant to reinvigorate coal said a senior White House official. The actions including emphasizing the US is back in the business of selling coal mining rights on federal land and ordering the rock be designated as a critical mineral. Other steps include accelerating the export of US coal and related technologies.
The outlet adds that the executive action “underscores Trump’s commitment to tapping America’s coal resources as a source of both electricity to run data centers and heat to forge steel.”
Trump is set to take action at 3:00 p.m. ET, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversees federal lands, spoke of the importance of resurging baseload energy, like coal, especially concerning the “AI arms race,” during his confirmation hearing in January.
“And, of course, as we talked about in the AI arms race, we need electricity for manufacturing,” Burgum said. “And AI is manufacturing intelligence. And if we don’t manufacture more intelligence than our adversaries, it affects every job, every company, in every industry.”
He emphasized a need for balance between renewable energies and baseload energy.
“We’ve got to have the balance between those two, or the grid, which is like a giant machine, just doesn’t work, and so we’ve got to get to work in permitting reform and speeding permitting,” Burgum detailed.
“Right now, we’ve stacked the deck… where we are creating roadblocks for people that want to do base load, and we’ve got massive tax incentives for people that want to do intermittent, unreliable, and the balance is out of whack, and we’ve got to bring it back in line,” he added.
