US President Donald Trump has thrown a lifeline to coal with his move to reinvigorate the industry by easing regulatory barriers. He’s declared the fuel “essential” to national and economic security, and his administration has given last-minute reprieves to plants that were set to shut down.

The country’s coal consumption had been trending downward for much of the past two decades in the face of cheap natural gas, tighter environmental restrictions and pressure to curb planet-warming emissions.

The US coal industry is having a good year. Demand for the dirtiest fossil fuel is increasing, utilities are running their plants harder, and miners are boosting production.

In September, the Department of Energy announced it would be providing $625mn to recommission or modernise coal power stations as part of a co-ordinated government effort to revive the industry.

The Energy Information Administration expects the US to consume 398mn metric tonnes of coal in 2025, up 7% from last year. That would mark the first increase since 2021, when power demand roared back after the global industrial slump triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Electricity generation accounts for the vast majority of coal use in the US. The EIA forecasts the amount of power from coal-fired plants will rise by 9% this year. That would push coal to 17% of the electricity mix — a slight uptick from 2024, although a far cry from the days when it fuelled more than half the country’s generation.

For years, cheap gas has made coal plants comparatively less economic to run. But gas prices increased in 2025 in the face of tighter supply, which incentivised utilities to burn more coal — particularly during the initial months of the year, when colder-than-anticipated winter weather drove up electricity demand for heating.

Trump issued an executive order in April that said it’s a national priority to support the US coal industry and directed federal agencies to identify and consider revising any policies that discourage coal production and power generation.

That same month, his administration granted a two-year exemption to dozens of coal-fired power plants from federal requirements to limit the emission of mercury and other toxins.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to reverse some of the fundamental legal findings for regulating greenhouse gases in the US, a move that would weaken pollution limits for coal plants and make them cheaper to operate.

The Trump administration is targeting its support further up the supply chain, too, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the US will “mine, baby, mine”. While the country has the largest coal reserves in the world, its production has been in long-term decline for almost two decades.

Power consumption in the US is expected to surge in the coming years after decades of stagnant growth. Some researchers forecast it could rise by as much as 25% by 2030.

The momentum reflects the proliferation of data centres for artificial intelligence (AI), as well as increasingly electrified homes and cars, and factories shifting away from fossil fuels.

Data centres could account for 7% of the country’s electricity demand by the end of the decade, according to BloombergNEF, from around 4% today.

BloombergNEF estimates that by 2035, the US will need an extra 77 gigawatts of generation capacity to power its data centres. Coal plants that delay their retirement could be the second-largest source to meet the additional capacity requirements after gas.

Coal plants are designed to run for decades, so project developers consider the economics over a much longer time horizon than presidential terms. While Trump has swung federal policy in coal’s favour, this could change as soon as 2029 if a more climate-friendly successor is elected to the White House.