When Donald J. Trump first ran for president, he slapped a miner's helmet and said that if he got into the White House, it would be “win, win, win” for coal workers.
Now Mr. Trump is campaigning for another chance at the presidency, but he has said little about America's coal miners and stopped short of making grand promises about their future.
These changes reflect political and economic realities, experts said. Most importantly, President Trump has overseen the decline of coal, not its salvation. Even though President Trump has rolled back climate regulations and appointed a coal lobbyist to lead the nation's top environmental agency, 75 coal-fired power plants have closed during his term and the industry has shed about 13,000 jobs.
“Not a single coal miner has returned to work and not a single power plant has been saved,” said Erin E. Bates, spokeswoman for the United Mine Workers of America, a labor group representing coal miners.
“I think he realizes that promises haven’t been kept during his time in office, and probably won’t be kept now,” she said. “Politically, it probably won’t pay for his campaign to break more promises.”
Twenty years ago, coal generated about half of America's electricity. Today it accounts for only 16% of U.S. electricity generation. At its peak in the 1980s, the industry employed nearly 180,000 people, but today that number stands at about 44,800, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Coal began its decline around 2005 when the fracking boom began producing large quantities of cheap natural gas, which was attractive to utilities. Over the past few years, the cost of power produced by wind turbines and solar farms has plummeted, displacing natural gas as the cheapest power source. Last year, electricity generated from onshore wind turbines and solar farms cost, on average, about one-third as much as electricity generated from coal.
Tough new limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants announced by the Environmental Protection Agency in April will likely make operating costs much higher for the country's remaining 200 or so coal plants. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels and, despite declines, accounts for more than half of global warming emissions from the U.S. power sector.
The only concrete new campaign promise President Trump has made on coal is to lift new EPA limits on power plant pollution, which industry leaders say is impossible to meet.
Rolling back regulations would help the industry, but it still wouldn't return coal to its glory days. “The truth is, if utilities move away from coal, no candidate will be able to do much to save the coal industry,” Mr. Bates said.
President Trump's energy agenda consists primarily of actively promoting oil and gas, the burning of which is driving climate change. He proposed quickly approving new oil and gas pipelines, expanding oil drilling on public lands and federal waters and allowing drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. He promised to cut federal support for electric vehicles and wind power, which he falsely claimed would “kill all our birds.” And he will once again withdraw the country from the 2015 Paris climate agreement. (He did so during his term in the White House, but President Biden has rejoined the global agreement to limit warming.)
“To keep pace with the global economy, President Trump will drill, baby, drill,” his campaign website says.
A review of his speech suggests that President Trump's comments about coal imply that the United States is wasting time and money on renewable energy amid competition from China. “They are opening coal plants every week while we struggle with wind,” he said in April.
Since declaring his candidacy for president in 2024, President Trump has mentioned coal miners only once during a campaign rally, saying, “We want clean coal. “We want to take care of the miners.”
Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, which supports the fossil fuel industry, said Democrats are also talking less about coal than they did in 2016, when President Barack Obama's plan to regulate coal plants was at the center of the issue. I pointed out that there is. His climate agenda.
These days, when Mr. Biden mentions coal, he's talking about federal funding to create clean energy jobs in former coal communities.
Coal has also fallen out of the spotlight because swing states that both candidates need to win in 2024, like Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, are not considered coal states. “The energy and climate conversation is shifting more towards oil and gas,” Mr. Pyle said.
Some Republicans also point out that there is no need to discuss coal as much as in the past because President Trump appears to have won votes in coal communities.
West Virginia, the second-largest coal producing state after Wyoming, was once a Democratic stronghold but has shifted solidly Republican in recent elections. Senior Sen. Joe Manchin III has left the Democratic Party, registered as an independent and is not running for re-election. Succeeding Manchin in the Senate will be Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican coal executive and West Virginia ally of President Trump.
“After Joe Manchin, there are no constituencies left in the Democratic Party that support coal.” said Neil Chatterjee, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under President Trump who was once an aide to Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“We don’t have to do that because Trump has the coal vote,” Mr. Chatterjee said. “He will still rail against EPA rules and overregulation and the Biden administration’s energy policies. But all of that can be done without a specific focus on coal because the working-class United Mine Worker voters are all Republican. ”
The United Mine Workers hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate since 2008, when the union backed President Obama, Mr. Bates said. But she said many coal workers are most likely supporters of President Trump.
Another factor that energy analysts say could shape President Trump's energy outlook. Some of coal's biggest driving forces are no longer on the political scene or play a smaller role than they once did.
For example, billionaire Robert E. Murray, who founded America's largest private coal mining company before going bankrupt in 2019, died in 2020. Mr. Murray has been a longtime supporter of President Trump and has hosted fundraisers for him. He was elected as a candidate and donated $300,000 to his inauguration. A few weeks later, Prime Minister Murray presented President Trump with detailed requests for a new administration aimed at “putting America’s coal miners back to work.” President Trump has met most of these wishes, but he has not been able to revive his industry.
McConnell, once Trump's most important ally on Capitol Hill and credited their teamwork for ending the Obama administration's “war on coal,” has been at odds with the former president since he criticized Trump after the Jan. 6 attack. I have done it. At the Capitol. That relationship may have begun to thaw Thursday, when Trump met with McConnell and other Republicans at the Capitol.
Still, no one would argue that the coal industry has lost influence.
“I don’t think coal has as much political influence as it used to,” said George David Banks, a former White House senior energy adviser in the Trump administration. “I felt discouraged.”
taylor robinson Contributing reporting from New York.