President Donald Trump and his administration are receiving backup from a coalition of energy policy experts for their move to rescind an Obama-era regulation that Rep. Harriet Hageman (R., Wyo.) previously told the Washington Reporter is “the head of the snake for all of the challenges that we’ve had for the last 20 years in terms of developing and producing domestically our own energy resources.”
The energy experts want the Trump administration to finish what it started, and finalize the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rescission of all greenhouse gas emissions standards for coal power plants. The EPA already proposed such a rescission in June 2025, but it has never been finalized.
“Although the current global energy crisis is likely to be transient, our domestic energy needs for data centers and reindustrialization are rapidly growing,” the signatories wrote to Trump and to others in his administration. “They underscore the further need for America to be able to utilize its own natural resources, especially coal. We should be burning as much coal as possible for electricity generation so we can export as much natural gas to countries that will pay more for it than U.S. utilities will for electricity generation. Coal came to America’s rescue in response to the 1970s energy crisis. It can do so again.”
Trump already rescinded Obama’s EPA Endangerment Finding for emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles, and because that rule served as the scientific basis for regulating coal plants, the energy experts see an opening to finish the job.
“The current global energy crisis spotlights the need for the U.S. to re-develop its awesome coal resource that was all but destroyed by the Obama and Biden administrations,” Steve Milloy, a former Trump EPA Transition team member, told the Reporter about why the letter is necessary; Milloy is also a Senior Fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. “Because the political future is uncertain, President Trump needs to expedite the termination of the overregulation of the coal industry. We must lock in much-needed regulatory changes now so that future politicians cannot easily or senselessly deny our country the tens of trillions of dollars of value that can be produced by coal-fired electricity.”
Joining Milloy in signing the letter are American Energy Institute’s Jason Isaac, American Lands Council Myron Ebell, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow’s Craig Rucker, Heartland Impact’s Cameron Sholty, Truth in Energy and Climate’s Frank Lasee, and the Heartland Institute’s James Taylor.
“We have an estimated 249 billion tons of recoverable coal,” they wrote. “That coal is worth $5-10 trillion at current market prices and could produce economic value from electricity generation worth $20-40 trillion. Coal burning in modern power plants is clean and safe.”
The letter to Trump and to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought, and to Mark Paoletta, the Administrator of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), was obtained exclusively by the Reporter.
Burgum, Wright, Zeldin, and others in the Trump administration have been working to supercharge American coal production for over a year, and Trump himself has leveraged America’s conflict with Iran to meet the resurgent global demands for coal.
Trump recently announced that he will use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to push approximately $700 million to help the coal industry. That push includes $425 million to fund 13 coal plants, $185 million to open two plants in Alaska and West Virginia and to restart a new plant in Maryland, and $75 million for a new coal export terminal in California.
