U.S. needs to keep coal plants open to meet growing electricity demand, energy secretary says

The U.S. needs more coal to meet growing electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers and other industries, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday.

“If we want to grow America’s electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants,” Wright told CNBC’s “Money Movers.”

The energy secretary’s comments come as President Donald Trump is poised to sign an order Tuesday that will direct the National Energy Dominance Council to classify coal as a critical mineral. The order aims to permit federal agencies to find coal on federal lands and prioritize leases for extraction.

The Trump administration wants to expand electricity output by 25%, said Wright, who founded Liberty Energy, an oilfield services company, in 2011. “That means we need all the reliable, affordable, secure sources we have and coal is a central one of those,” the energy secretary said.

Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January that he would use emergency powers to expedite the construction of power plants for data centers. The president said plants can use whatever fuel they want, suggesting coal as a backup power source.

It’s unclear whether data centers will turn to coal as a fuel source due to its emissions. Coal emits significantly more carbon dioxide than gas, according to the EIA. The tech sector is playing the lead role in building AI data centers, and they have focused on procuring renewables and increasingly nuclear to meet their environmental goals.

About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down significantly from 51% in 2001, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Natural gas has displaced coal’s market share over the past quarter century in the wake of the shale boom.

Electricity generators in the U.S. are planning to retire about 8 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity in 2025, which represents nearly 5% of coal fleet operating in 2024, according to EIA. Production of coal in 2023 was less than half of the total in 2008, according to the agency.

The largest grid operator in the U.S., PJM Interconnection, has warned that it will struggle to meet electricity demand due to planned power plant retirements, most of which are coal fired.