Doug Burgum touts coal energy on the heels of Trump's executive order

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum discussed the coal industry and President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to help raise its production in an interview with FOX Business’ Kelly Saberi Friday.

The president signed an executive order earlier this week that instructed the National Energy Dominance Council to designate coal as a "mineral" under another measure that sought to "boost American mineral production, streamline permitting, and enhance national security," according to the White House.

His order included other measures, including one instructing Burgum to "acknowledge the Jewell Moratorium" that halted coal leasing on federal land and one ordering agencies to "identify coal resources on federal lands," get rid of barriers to mining and make coal leasing on federal lands a priority.

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"Coal is incredibly important to our economy at a very fundamental level," Burgum told Saberi. "Not only is coal used in a thermal way to produce electricity, which we need for just about everything, but certainly, right now, we need it to lower the price for consumers across the country because electricity prices shot up under the Biden administration. We’ve got to get it down again by getting more supply."

About 16% of America’s electricity generation came from coal in 2024, according to the Short-Term Energy Outlook the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released Thursday.

Natural gas provided 42% of U.S. power last year, the report said. Meanwhile, renewables and nuclear accounted for 23% and 19%, respectively.

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Burgum also said coal was important in U.S. competition with China on artificial intelligence (AI).

"With the AI battle that we’re against with China, actually an AI arms race for artificial intelligence, electricity is worth more today than any point in history because you can take a kilowatt of electricity and then actually manufacture intelligence with it," he said. "So, the demand is soaring. We need more. And, of course, coal is one of those base levels."

The interior secretary spoke with Saberi while visiting metallurgical coal-mining company Warrior Met Coal in Alabama. Metallurgical coal is used to make steel. 

China is a major producer of metallurgical coal but does not export it, according to Saberi. She reported Trump’s executive order "directly impacts" Warrior "because without mining on federal land, they will lose out on hundreds of thousands (in) coal that will simply go to waste."

"Met coal has got all the characteristics to be essential for us for steel making," Burgum told her during the interview. "And, as you know, President Trump is bringing back the steel industry in the U.S., putting tariffs on those that might be dumping steel into the U.S., supporting our own U.S. steel companies here."

Trump reimposed a 25% tariff on steel imports in February, one of several levies the president has imposed on goods imported from foreign countries since taking office.

"The product that’s made right here, that’s harvested right here and mined right here is essential to us bringing back our steel industry," Burgum told Saberi. 

Burgum told Saberi companies wanting to build manufacturing plants and data centers in the U.S. need steel to do so.

"If you want to have steel made in the U.S., you need met coal, and they’re producing it right here."

Burgum said coal "needs to become designated on the critical minerals list because, right now, in this battle we’re having with China," the country is restricting certain minerals from the U.S.

The American public "owns 700 million acres of subsurface," and the government is "finding that some of the rare earth minerals that China’s restricting from us" are in coal, according to the interior secretary.

"So, the coal is a resource not only used for electricity, it’s absolutely essential met coal be used for steel making," he said. "But in that coal resource, there’s critical minerals that we need for defense and technology, and so this is a triple win for the U.S. for us to get back in the coal business." 

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He also said "part of the battle" with China on AI is "making sure that, as a country, we’ve got enough electricity to win the AI arms race, but also enough to make sure that we've got electricity for all those manufacturing plants that are coming. And we have enough to actually make sure that we are supplying it so the prices can start to stay flat or go down, because under the Biden administration, electricity prices went through the roof." 

Coal, he said, will play a part in that.

GridStrategies projected in December that electricity demand in the U.S. will jump by 15.8% by 2029, with data centers, manufacturing and electrification being major contributors to that.

U.S. production of coal totaled 512.1 million short tons in 2024, according to preliminary EIA data. 

In its Annual Coal Report released Tuesday, the EIA said the U.S. produced "less than half the amount" of coal in 2023 compared to 2008.

It linked lower coal production to "rising mining costs, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and competition from other sources of electric power generation" like natural gas and renewables.

The U.S. is projected to produce nearly 490 million short tons of coal in 2025, according to the EIA.

Kelly Saberi contributed to this report