Well now. If you ever needed proof that in the White House the past is never really past, here it is with a shovel and a soot-covered grin.
President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to buy more electricity from coal-fired power plants to run military bases — because nothing says “future warfare” like plugging the F-35 simulator into 19th-century technology.
He signed the executive order Wednesday and, for good measure, announced $175 million in federal money to upgrade six coal plants. That comes on top of $625 million already steered toward propping up an industry that’s been on life support since fracking made gas cheaper and renewables started eating coal’s lunch. The Interior Department is opening more federal land to coal leasing, and utilities are getting the message: the nation’s largest public power provider says it will keep two big Tennessee coal plants running past their planned retirement dates.
All of it wrapped in the language of an “energy emergency.”
Let’s translate that into plain English.
Coal is the dirtiest major fuel we burn at scale. It’s also increasingly one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity when you factor in maintenance, fuel transport, pollution controls and the long tail of environmental cleanup. The market has been moving away from it for years. Utilities didn’t retire plants because they were feeling woke. They retired them because the numbers didn’t pencil out.
Now the federal government is stepping in to tilt the table.
Trump is expected to move against the EPA’s “endangerment finding” — the scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare — which underpins federal climate regulation. He’s also stripping away tax incentives for renewable energy, effectively making wind and solar more expensive while using federal muscle to make coal look competitive.
If you’re an energy executive, that’s not a free market. That’s a flashing signal from the White House: We prefer this fuel. Act accordingly.
The Pentagon piece is the part that deserves the closest scrutiny. Military installations consume enormous amounts of electricity. Over the past decade, defense planners have pushed for diversified grids, microgrids, backup generation and renewable integration for one simple reason: resilience. Bases need to stay powered during cyberattacks, extreme weather and grid failures. Betting heavily on aging coal plants — many of which were already slated for shutdown — doesn’t automatically solve that vulnerability problem.
If anything, it ties critical infrastructure more tightly to centralized, legacy generation.
Supporters argue coal offers reliability and national security. Critics counter that true energy security comes from distributed systems, storage, and flexible generation — not from reopening plants that utilities were eager to mothball.
This is classic White House muscle memory: when an industry struggles, wrap it in the flag and call it strategic. Coal communities have taken real economic hits over the past two decades. That’s a serious issue. But reviving demand by executive order is a policy choice, not an inevitability.
Markets were moving one direction. The administration just grabbed the steering wheel and took us back to the ’50s.
The question isn’t whether coal will burn brighter for a few years. Federal dollars can make almost anything look alive for a while. The question is whether this reshuffle leaves the military more resilient, taxpayers holding the bill, and the energy sector more distorted than it was before.
If this is an “energy emergency,” it’s one declared in the White House — not in the power markets.
Call it energy security if you like — just don’t pretend it isn’t a step back toward the age of steam.