Is Trump setting stage to challenge Virginia’s Clean Economy Act? 5 takeaways from his push to boost coal.

President Donald Trump stood in front of a group of hard-hatted coal miners this week to announce that he had signed a series of executive orders aimed at “reinvigorating America’s beautiful clean coal industry.”

Some of these directly involve Virginia, the nation’s 12th-biggest coal-producing state and home to the nation’s biggest coal-exporting port. 

Some don’t. (I suppose you can say they all involve Virginia to the extent that burning coal releases carbon, which makes the planet warmer, but I’m sticking to the economics here.)

Let’s look at the ones that do.

1. Trump wants to increase coal exports. That would help Southwest Virginia and Hampton Roads if it happens.

Of all of Trump’s coal-related orders, this is the one that might have the most direct impact on Virginia because Virginia’s coal industry is more export-focused than most states. About 20% of the nation’s coal is exported, but about 40% of Virginia’s is, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Furthermore, Hampton Roads is the nation’s top coal port; about one-third of the nation’s coal exports go through the Virginia port, according to the EIA. 

More coal exports would mean more coal trains rumbling through Roanoke and Lynchburg and lots of other communities in Southwest and Southside on their way to the port.

An inconvenient political point: U.S. coal exports grew under Joe Biden’s administration, according to the EIA, although it’s difficult to impossible to tie that to any specific presidential action. Rather, that simply reflected market demand. 

Can Trump increase American coal exports? That’s hard to say — the marketplace is the ultimate driver here, not any presidential decree. However, given that coal exports were increasing before Trump took office, it’s realistic to think they might keep increasing, no matter who the president is. Other countries simply aren’t bound by the environmental restrictions that have discouraged coal in the United States. 

However, the better question might be whether Trump could inadvertently decrease American coal exports. The answer there is clearly “yes.” He would like his on-again, off-again tariffs to prompt other countries to buy more U.S. products — coal among them. However, other countries could also retaliate by buying fewer U.S. products and shifting their business elsewhere. We’re not the only country selling coal. In fact, those shifts are already happening in other energy sectors. China has started canceling imports of liquefied natural gas and instead is seeking contracts from Australia and Middle Eastern suppliers, according to Freight Waves. 

Before all these up-and-down, tit-for-tat tariffs, these were the nation’s top coal customers:

India: 24.85%
Japan : 9.95%
The Netherlands: 9.77%
Brazil: 7.55%
China: 6.46%

The United States sells coal to at least 71 countries, according to the EIA. However, those five countries account for more than half — 58.59% — of the nation’s coal exports. Notice that China ranks high on the list. S&P Global has already cited one unnamed coal executive saying that once China imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. coal imports, “it pretty much killed off all US coal imports to the country.” S&P quoted one trader saying that to make up for the loss of Chinese business, the U.S. will need to sell more to India — if it can. 

The bottom line: It’s simply too early to tell what impact tariffs will have on coal exports. If, however, Trump’s actions (or anything else) throw the global economy into a recession, then an economic slowdown would reduce the need for energy to run factories, and that would reduce the demand for coal, so the coal industry definitely doesn’t want a recession.

There are many things Trump is doing with coal that he can do on his own. He can make federal lands available for coal mining, for instance. That, though, primarily involves potential mines out west. Wyoming, not West Virginia, is the nation’s top coal producer. Colorado and Utah outrank Virginia. The thing that would most directly benefit coal in Virginia — encouraging more exports — is beyond the president’s command.

2. Trump wants to use coal to power data centers — but the data center industry doesn’t. 

Just a day before Trump announced his executive orders on coal, a report by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association projected that U.S. energy demands will increase 50% by 2050 — thanks largely to the growth of data centers and electric vehicles.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to us in Virginia. Earlier this year, the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, forecast that Virginia’s electricity demands could triple by 2040 if data centers continue to grow without restraint. 

Data centers have always been thirsty for power, but artificial intelligence is particularly energy-intensive, so the more we use AI — whether it’s analyzing huge datasets or producing funny but fake pictures — the more energy we’ll need.

It’s natural that someone who wants to revive coal would see this AI-driven demand as a lifeline. Trump is hardly alone. Last month, West Virginia state legislators asked an Appalachian Power executive if the utility would burn more coal if the state had more data centers. (West Virginia currently has six.) The answer from Appalachian: No. If a “sizable new customer” appeared, and the utility had to generate more power, it would turn to natural gas, not coal, said Randall Short, director of regulatory services for Appalachian Power. Why? Because natural gas is cheaper. “Natural gas sets the market, and it’s beneficial to the customers who use natural gas when the price is $2 or $3 an MCF (thousand cubic feet), but at those prices, it’s very hard to get a coal contract that can beat that price,” Short said.

That’s in line with what Appalachian executives have said for years now: They have no interest in investing in coal plants because they’re simply no longer economical. When utilities build generating capacity, they do so with 40-year investment horizons in mind. Trump may want to revive coal, but the marketplace doesn’t. If a coal-burning utility in a coal-producing state isn’t interested in using coal to power data centers, who will be? It certainly won’t be the utilities in Virginia, where the Clean Economy Act mandates a carbon-free power grid by 2050. 

Data center-driven demand may well keep some coal-fired plants in other states longer than they normally would be. Moody’s, the financial services agency, forecast this last year. Extending the life of a coal plant, though, is not the same as building more. The McKinsey & Company consultancy forecasts that the use of coal to power data centers is going to virtually disappear by 2030, while the use of natural gas, solar and wind energy grows. The tech industry in general really likes renewables, which is why we’re seeing Amazon Web Services signing up for at least 19 solar farms across rural Virginia. 

The main chatter in the tech industry, though, is about nuclear. Amazon has signed a deal with Dominion Energy to explore a small nuclear reactor at Dominion’s Lake Anna nuclear station in Louisa County. (Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.) Amazon is also pursuing four nuclear reactors in Washington state. Microsoft has a deal to restart a unit at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Google has signed its own deal with Kairos to pursue a “fleet” of small nuclear reactors.

The enthusiasm for small nuclear reactors is matched only by the skepticism in some quarters surrounding them. The technology is not “unproven,” as some critics say. We’ve had small reactors in submarines and aircraft carriers for a long time. What’s unproven is the commercial viability: Nuclear has historically been horrendously expensive; can smaller reactors be mass-produced more quickly and inexpensively? That’s yet to be seen, but what is clear is that the data center industry is exploring all options except coal. 

Trump says that Democrats have waged a “war on coal,” and there’s much truth to that, but in pushing coal, he’s now waging his own war against the marketplace. Don’t count on seeing smokestacks beside data centers. In any case, there’s another reason why that won’t be happening: Virginia has more data centers than any other state, but Virginia’s Clean Economy Act is phasing out coal. However, that brings us to:

3. Trump wants to challenge state laws that discourage coal. Could Virginia see a legal challenge to the Clean Economy Act?

In his executive orders, Trump directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to “identify all state and local laws” that are “burdening the identification, development, siting, production, or use of domestic energy resources” and which “may be unconstitutional, preempted by Federal law, or otherwise unenforceable.”

That raises the question of whether the Virginia Clean Economy Act might be subject to federal challenge. Trump’s order says that “the Attorney General shall prioritize the identification of any such State laws purporting to address ‘climate change; or involving ‘environmental, social, and governance’ initiatives, ‘environmental justice,’ carbon or ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions, and funds to collect carbon penalties or carbon taxes.” The Clean Economy Act mentions emissions nine times, the state’s Council on Environmental Justice four times, greenhouse gases twice. 

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, says the Clean Economy Act is in no jeopardy: “The VCEA is not unconstitutional or preempted by federal law. The states have the power to enact environmental regulations that are more stringent than the floor set forth by the federal government for decades. This EO is just anti-climate change performative nonsense and I would hope that our Governor and Attorney General will stand up to fight federal interference against state sovereignty and defend Virginia’s laws and our state’s rights.”

Virginia Republicans have never liked the Clean Economy Act — arguing that it’s driving up energy prices — and have been planning to make their opposition to it part of the fall campaign for governor and the House of Delegates. I asked the office of Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, about this provision of Trump’s order and got this reply: “We are evaluating the executive order and what Virginia laws may be covered by it but cannot comment further due to the possibility of litigation.”

State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, was not so reluctant to speak out. “The history of energy and the Industrial Revolution has always run through Southwest Virginia with coal,” he said. “The President recognized that by this Executive Order, and I firmly believe that any legislation like the Virginia Clean Energy Act that seeks to limit the ability of Virginia or the federal government to access all sources in order to meet the country’s energy demand are patently unconstitutional and against the American way when it comes to power generation.” (Stanley had a lot more to say about the Clean Economy Act; for that, see West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons. Sign up below.)

Given the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to test the boundaries of the law in other ways, I’m wondering why it wouldn’t want to challenge the Clean Economy Act, just to see what would happen. After all, if Trump thinks that coal is the way to power data centers, why not go after a no-coal law in the state that has more data centers than anywhere else? That would seem to be a pretty inviting target.

4. Trump’s order is aimed at promoting coal, but is it written in a way that it could also undermine coal?

Go back up to the instructions Trump has given his attorney general — to find state and local laws that stand in the way of “domestic energy production.” While this came out as part of his promotion of coal, the prologue to that executive order describes multiple forms of energy that constitute “domestic energy production — particularly oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, geothermal, biofuel, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.” 

In the marketplace, natural gas is the enemy of coal because it’s cheaper. See what the Appalachian Power executive told the West Virginia legislators. While Trump may want both natural gas and coal, the marketplace seems likely to always favor the former, so if this executive order has the impact of promoting more natural gas, that may also have the effect of undermining coal. 

You’ll also notice what’s not listed as a domestic energy source: solar and wind, which are quite domestic. Politically, we have a lot of Republicans — such as Gov. Glenn Youngkin — who push an “all of the above” energy strategy. Trump is not one of those. He doesn’t believe in “all of the above.” He believes only in energy you can drill or mine out of the ground. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have issued a separate order aimed at shutting down offshore wind. If there’s truly an “energy emergency,” as he says, we wouldn’t be eliminating a whole industry sector, especially one that’s creating American manufacturing jobs. 

Nonetheless, there’s a loophole. While Trump’s order emphasizes other fuels, it doesn’t specifically exclude solar and wind, either. A clever lawyer (or political commentator) could argue that Trump’s order could be used to target local ordinances that restrict or ban solar energy development. If the goal is simply to generate more energy, without regard for environmental or other considerations, how is a local ordinance banning solar farms any different from a state law phasing out coal? Both are restricting energy choices. If I were a conservative pro-solar activist (of which there are more than you may realize), I’d cite this executive order as a way to challenge local anti-solar ordinances. 

5. Trump wants to accelerate coal technology but doesn’t (yet) follow through with the research funding to make this happen.

Trump insists on calling coal “clean,” when it’s obviously not. “I call it beautiful, clean coal — I tell my people to never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it,” Trump said during his event. Indeed, one of his executive orders is officially titled: “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.”

While critics may think Trump’s orders run counter to science, one of them is rooted in science. Trump directs the Energy secretary “to accelerate the development, deployment, and commercialization of coal technologies,” with specific reference to “technologies that utilize coal and coal byproducts such as building materials, battery materials, carbon fiber, synthetic graphite, and printing materials.” There is a growing field of research into what else we can do with coal besides burning it. Last year, the National Energy Technology Laboratory announced a breakthrough in using coal waste to produce graphite, which, in turn, could be used in lithium-ion batteries — the latter being a key component of many “green” technologies. We think of coal as the antithesis of green technology, but that research suggests coal can be used to create green technology, which challenges our usual understanding of things.

Trump’s interest in accelerating this “coal technology,” though, would be more believable if he weren’t simultaneously busy whacking research funding for the nation’s universities. That’s actually a good test of whether Trump is serious about this coal initiative, or not. If Trump really wants to boost coal technology, he’d shower the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Tech with funding. Let’s see.