The president of the United States, Donald Trump, on Tuesday, April 8, signed executive orders of “turbocharged coal mining” in the country, seeking “more than doubling” the production of electricity to keep up with the artificial intelligence technology of energy hunting. The executive orders, which Trump signed surrounded by miners with hard hats, will raise the regulatory barriers to coal extraction and suspend the planned closures of numerous electric power plants in the country.
“We will end the government’s bias against coal,” said the Republican, who instructed the Department of Justice to identify and fight any local regulations that “leave our coal miners out of business.” Trump also said that it would be “possible to extract large amounts of critical minerals and foreign lands, which, you know, we need technology and high technology in the coal mining process.”
Lena Moffitt, director of the Evergreen climatic NGO, criticized the president in a statement for using artificial intelligence as “a cover to rescue their fossil fuel donors with the Diritt energy source, more expensive in the network.”
The production of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, has fallen abruptly in the United States in the last fifteen years. In 2023, coal represented almost approximately 16% or total electricity production, surpassed by renewable energies to almost 21%.
Trump has been a climate change skeptic, and since his return to the White House it has been proposed to increase fossil fuels through deregulation. Last month, his administration announced a wave of environmental reversals aimed at the green policies of his predecessor Joe Biden.
Among the most significant of them was the review of a 2024 rule that asks coal plants to eliminate almost all their carbon emissions or commit to close completely, an cornerstone or the Biden climate agenda.
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