Last year, I moved to Kentucky—not to escape the chaos of California, but to build something better. I wanted to be somewhere people still believed in work, community, and country. You feel that spirit in the coal towns etched into the hills of Appalachian Kentucky. Places where people don’t need lectures on consuming energy—they produce it.
That’s why Trump’s recent executive order promoting coal harvesting stood out to me, not as a policy wonk, but as someone who’s chosen to root himself here. For the first time in years, Washington is acknowledging that the American interior matters. Our energy future won’t be engineered in Davos or Silicon Valley. It’ll be built in places like Pikeville and Hazard.
But let’s not pretend an executive order alone is enough. Yes, this is a step in the right direction. It cuts through regulatory chokeholds and signals a long-overdue realignment of national priorities. Good. Now what?
If the Trump administration is serious about revitalizing Kentucky—and America—this cannot be the end of the conversation. It must be the beginning.
Signed on April 8, the “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” order reclassifies coal as a “mineral,” streamlining permitting and opening federal lands for mining. “It is the policy of the United States that coal is essential to our national and economic security,” the order declares.
That’s the clearest signal yet that the administration sees energy policy not as a climate crusade, but as imperative to national defense and lasting prosperity. The order aims to reverse the Obama- and Biden-era restrictions that crippled American coal, and mandates a 60-day review of federally managed reserves for potential extraction by public or private actors.
American-produced energy is needed now more than ever. The order explains that coal-fired energy will be used for mainland steel production and artificial intelligence data centers, powering homeland industries. In theory, the executive order provides the conditions that could lead to a new Golden Age for America.
But we’ve seen this story before. Let’s be blunt: No new coal-fired power plant has broken ground since 2014. A good policy doesn’t matter if no one acts on it. Rural America gets the headline. The Beltway moves on.
Unfortunately for the Beltway, what happens to America’s coal fields has national and global implications. While coal still powers 16 percent of the grid, public investment has all but dried up. Plants have been decommissioned faster than they’ve been replaced, and federal policy has offered little support for modernization. Both Obama and Biden policies favored renewable energy at the expense of coal plants, helping renewables surpass coal in generating power for the electricity grid—but not without serious drawbacks.
One of those drawbacks, as my native California continues to ignore, is the reliance of renewables on outside sources to power the grid. “Unlike nuclear and fossil-fuel plants, solar and wind do not produce constant power at a steady frequency, making the grid less stable,” the Institute of Energy Research observes.
This winter, California celebrated “100 days of 100 percent clean energy.” But like much of the climate conversation, this headline obscures the truth. Renewable output fluctuates and the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows fossil fuels still underpin most of the grid. Come summertime, rolling blackouts can’t become the status quo for the rest of the country.
That’s where coal comes into the picture. Bringing coal to the forefront of American energy will take a dedicated effort from the states of Appalachia. Kentucky doesn’t just have the resources. It has the laws, the land, and the legacy to lead. If lawmakers pursue this correctly, Appalachia could power the next American century.
The foundation isn’t theoretical; it’s sitting beneath our feet. Kentucky ranks fifth in the nation in estimated recoverable coal reserves, with substantial deposits in both its eastern and western coalfields. At its peak in 1990, Kentucky produced 173 million tons. Despite over two centuries of mining, the state still possesses an estimated 30 billion tons of remaining coal reserves, indicating its vast, underutilized energy potential.
But the question is: How did a state go from producing 34.6 million tons of coal in 2000 to only 5.6 million tons within a matter of twenty-five years? We know the answers: Production declined as renewables and natural gas became increasingly popular in the marketplace. Additionally, environmental regulations and the disappearance of mainland manufacturing jobs ultimately led to the national decline of the coal industry.
While past national policies have favored renewable energy and provided massive subsidies, Kentucky’s state legislature has taken measures to demonstrate a commitment to preserving and revitalizing the coal industry. In 2023, the legislature enacted laws requiring utilities to prove that they must maintain service before decommissioning coal-fired plants, ensuring the Commonwealth’s energy reliability and keeping the currently running plants operational.
Additionally, Senate Bill 89 was passed in March to adjust environmental regulations to streamline operations for coal facilities. Kentucky is signaling its priorities by shedding unnecessary regulations that hold back the coal industry, opening up pathways for coal-fired plants and mining in the Commonwealth and greater Appalachia.
Legislative momentum is essential, but policy means nothing without the logistics to support it. That’s what makes Kentucky different. It doesn’t just have a friendly legislature, but also the infrastructure to match. The Commonwealth leads the region in completed segments of the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS), a decades-long project designed to integrate Appalachia into the national economy through its high-capacity roadways.
That network expands further with the 2024 Coal Hauling Highway, which significantly overlaps the ADHS across eastern and central Kentucky. These routes connect the state’s coalfields to processing plants and industrial hubs both inside and beyond its borders. From the coal-rich hills of Pike County to intermodal terminals in Louisville and neighboring states, Kentucky has a functioning supply chain, ready to supply itself and its neighbors.
Unfortunately, financing remains the coal industry’s most prominent bottleneck. For years, coal has been quietly redlined by financial institutions concerned with environmental scores and achieving the Paris Climate Accords’ “net zero” goal. No revival will succeed if Appalachian coal miners are treated like a liability. Fortunately, domestic banks may not truly be as anti-coal as they’ve claimed.
Eight years after America signed onto the Climate Accords, recent reports show a number of U.S. banks are still investing in the coal industry. According to Transition Pathway Initiative, 85 percent of banks are open to financing new coal projects. American banking giants like JPMorgan and Bank of America have withdrawn from the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) pledge.
Coal’s revival isn’t solely about investing in extraction projects, but in the broader infrastructure needed to make them possible. That’s where long-standing programs like the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and their Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiative come in. These initiatives provide funding for job training, infrastructure, and the redevelopment of former mining communities. If paired with real energy production, they could offer a blueprint for rebuilding the Appalachian middle class. All can be achieved without outsourcing identity or dignity to the Beltway or the coasts.
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Kentucky has the legal, logistical, and institutional tools at its disposal. It just needs the will to execute and the vision to follow through.
President Trump’s executive order is a strong step toward reviving the coal industry, with Appalachia at the center of a broader national comeback. This is no longer the 1900s of poor mountain towns, victims of periphery extraction—this is Appalachia’s chance to harness its energy sector beyond 10, 20, or 50 years. The promise of energy independence isn’t just to power cities, but to give people in rural America an opportunity to stay rooted.
Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia do not want pity. We want purpose, permanence, and a place in the American dream. With Kentucky at the lead, coal can power the new digital age. The executive order is a start. Let’s make sure it’s not only a headline, but a foundation.
