Donald Trump Wants to Save the Coal Industry. He’s Too Late
1 min read
Summary
Donald Trump’s latest tactic to prop up the American coal industry is to exploit the expected rise in demand for electricity from AI and data centres.
The President has signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to purchase more coal to power data centres and to identify other ways to bolster coal-fired power.
However, experts have pointed out that the irony is staggering, considering that AI and data centres are intended to power the clean energy revolution.
According to energy data analyst Seth Feaster, quoting John Moore of the National Resource Defense Council, “the effort is to thumb on one energy source that happens to be one of the highest-cost energy sources”.
Data centres in Virginia, for example, are reliant on natural gas, not coal, for energy, and there has been little interest from tech firms in switching to coal.
Furthermore, building new, up-to-date coal plants would require significant investment for outdated technology.
A recent study in Science estimated that between 1999 and 2020, coal-fired power plants were responsible for 460,000 excess deaths in the US alone due to the mix of heavy metals and chemicals they emit.
