The Wall Street Journal hit the nail on the head this weekend in an editorial titled “Thank Heaven for Coal Power in the Cold.” Winter storm Fern has wreaked havoc across a 2,000-mile stretch of the country leaving hundreds of thousands without power. If not for coal generation, it would be millions more.
Electricity grids from Texas to New England are under immense strain and grid operators are calling for every available megawatt of power to keep the lights and heat flowing. Thanks to assistance from the Department of Energy, which issued grid emergencies for several grids allowing operators increased flexibility and resources to manage demand, we haven’t seen rolling power outages. But we’re not out of the woods yet.
Temperatures are forecast to drop further, and energy demand will be spiking, testing record levels in many states. Grid operators’ ability to avoid catastrophe so far owes much to decisions made well before the arrival of this brutal cold.
As The Journal editorial board observed, “Americans can be grateful the Biden crowd didn’t succeed in forcing all coal plants to shut down.” The Trump administration’s recognition of the nation’s grid emergency, rejection of the Biden regulatory onslaught and laser focus on keeping coal capacity available for moments exactly like this is proving exceptionally prescient.
As Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, observed just last week, the administration has worked to keep 17 gigawatts of coal capacity operating that otherwise would have closed. With margins on so many grids so thin, that capacity is likely the difference between successfully managing this grid emergency and millions of American families being left in the cold and dark.
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Coal's Comeback: A Year of Realism, Renewal & Restored Confidence
By Chris Hamilton, President, West Virginia Coal Associaiton
As the calendar turns, it is worth pausing to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re headed. For America’s coal industry — and especially for the men and women of the West Virginia coalfields — 2025 marked a turning point. After years of regulatory headwinds and policy uncertainty, the nation began to regain its footing. The change did not come by accident. It came because leadership changed, priorities changed, and common sense began to reassert itself.
When President Donald Trump began his second term last January, he did so with a clear message: America would no longer apologize for producing energy. From Day One, the administration moved to restore balance to federal energy policy—recognizing that affordability, reliability and national security matter just as much as aspirational targets and glossy press releases.
Chris Hamilton
That shift has made a difference. Regulatory reform efforts in 2025 focused on removing onerous rules, restoring permitting discipline and re-centering federal agencies on statutory authority rather than ideological agendas. The result has been greater certainty for energy producers, utilities and investors. Markets function better when rules are clear and durable. Coal has benefited because it competes best on a level field.
At the national level, the reassertion of American energy dominance has not been theoretical. It has been practical. The administration’s approach acknowledged what grid operators and engineers have said for years: You cannot run a modern economy on intermittent power alone. Coal remains essential to grid stability, particularly during peak demand, extreme weather and supply disruptions. In 2025, those realities became harder to ignore.
Across the country, utilities and policymakers were forced to confront reliability challenges brought on by years of premature baseload retirements. The lesson was simple and sobering: You cannot replace firm, dispatchable generation with hope. Coal’s role in the nation’s energy mix—never gone, but often dismissed—has been reaffirmed by necessity as much as by policy.
Here in West Virginia, we saw that same realism take hold. Gov. Patrick Morrisey moved quickly to align state policy with the realities of energy production and economic development. His administration has made clear that West Virginia will not sabotage its own strengths. Coal is not a relic here; it is a foundation.
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Winter Storm Threat Should Boost Trump Pro-Coal Policy
A potentially deadly winter storm is bearing down on most of the U.S., followed by days of bitter, if not record cold. This sort of extreme weather is a good example of why President Donald Trump’s effort to make coal great again matters.
More deaths occur during cold temperatures than during hot temperatures. Warmth is essential for survival in extreme cold. Electricity is generally needed to do that, even if your home is heated by oil or gas. Utilities, therefore, must keep the electricity flowing.
Five years ago on Valentine’s Day, wind turbines in Texas literally froze during a severe winter storm. Despite the foreseeability of the weather and the wind turbine failure, back-up gas plants had not been prepared to make up for the loss in electricity generation. Hundreds of Texans died as a result of the grid failure. The grid itself came within moments of being severely damaged, which would have been absolutely catastrophic.
But even if the gas plants had been prepared to back-up the wind turbines, there might still have been problems as explained in this week’s New York Times report, “Storm Poses Big Threats to Power Grids Across U.S.”
“[University of Texas researcher Joshua Rhodes] remains concerned about the system for transporting natural gas from production sites in West Texas and elsewhere to the power plants that burn the gas to generate electricity,” the Times reports.
“Much like household pipes, natural gas pipelines and other equipment that is not properly insulated can freeze, interrupting the supply of fuel to power plants. Up to two-thirds of natural gas processing plants in the Permian Basin, which lies in Texas and New Mexico, experienced an outage during the winter storm five years ago, the University of Texas report found. ‘When it happens to the big guys, that’s when there’s a noticeable loss of gas going to the power plants and people’s houses,’ said Suzie Boyd, whose company, Caballo Loco Midstream, operates networks of small natural gas pipelines in West Texas and New Mexico.”
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Why Are We Still Closing Coal Plants?
By Frank Clemente and Fred Palmer; Coal is the Cornerstone, LLC.
Fred Palmer
Frank Clemente
The warnings come from the organizations responsible for assuring reliable electric power. The National Electric Reliability Council has stated” “coal-fired generator retirements… have caused a sharp decline in anticipated resource … new generation is insufficient to make up for retirements and load growth.” The largest power pools in the nation echoed NERC concern in testimony before the House Energy Committee:
(1) PJM Interconnection (67 million people), CEO Manu Asthana: “dispatchable generators- those generators that can quickly respond regardless of weather, are retiring at a rapid pace largely due to state and federal policies.”
(2) MISO (15 states), Jennifer Curran, Senior VP,: “The rapid retirement of existing coal power plants threatens to outpace the ability of new resources”
(3) Southwest Power Pool (13 states) : CEO Lanny Nickell : “these retirements have almost exponentially increased reliability risks… around-the-clock generation (coal) was retired and largely replaced with weather-dependent resources” (i.e. wind and solar).
Meanwhile, China is building the most reliable, affordable and robust electric power system in the world - and it is anchored by coal. By 2030, China’s coal generating capacity will be over 1,300 GW—compared to 68 GW in the US. In fact, China is adding 55 GW of coal capacity this year alone.
American families already pay more than twice as much for electricity as families in China and the worst is yet to come. Since January 2025, more than 108 million electric utility customers across 49 states and Washington, D.C., faced rate increases of over $80 billion and 2026 costs are already off and running.
Two decades of benign electricity demand have made the United States intellectually lazy regarding how power needs of the next generation of Americans will be met reliably and at reasonable cost.
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The Trump Administration Has a New Mascot
Mascots are currently enjoying a renaissance. From McDonald’s Grimace to the WNBA’s Ellie the Elephant and Pop-Tarts’ Pop-Tart guy, companies everywhere are leaning on characters to represent their brand values and attract eyes on social media. Now the Trump administration is joining in with its own mascot. It’s a literal lump of coal.
The coal mascot—named “Coalie”—appears to be a new character designed to represent the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), a bureau in the U.S. Department of the Interior. Coalie officially debuted on January 22, when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted him (it?) on his X account.
In the post, which has now been viewed more than 37,000 times, Burgum shared an obviously AI-generated illustration of himself kneeling next to a grinning, bug-eyed piece of coal that’s decked out in a yellow coal miner’s helmet, vest, and boots. The caption, in part, read “Mine, Baby, Mine!”
Image: USDOI
A deeper exploration of OSMRE’s website shows that Coalie appears to be a genuine effort on the agency’s part to explain its goals. And while it may not have been OSMRE’s intention, a poorly designed lump of coal is actually the perfect metaphor to represent the Trump administration’s desperate attempt to revive the coal industry.
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