Donald Trump wants to save the coal industry. Earlier this week, he signed a rash of executive orders to reopen shuttered coal plants, subsidize unprofitable ones, and—through legally dubious means—tear up regulations that “discriminate” against coal at every level of government, all the while opening up millions of acres of public lands for coal mining. The order further instructs the Department of Energy to explore the question of whether coal-fired power plants could provide energy to new AI data centers. That suite of orders builds on an announcement from the Department of Energy last week that it had identified 16 federal sites that are “uniquely positioned for rapid data center construction, including in-place energy infrastructure.”

“You know, we need to do the AI, all of this new technology that’s coming on line,” Trump said on Tuesday, flanked by coal miners. “We need more than double the energy, the electricity, that we currently have.”

Experts are skeptical that Trump will revive King Coal, however much energy AI developers say they need. Coal currently accounts for about 16 percent of electricity generation in the United States, down from more than 40 percent in 2011. Half of the country’s remaining fleet of coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be retired through 2030. Given that coal is now significantly more expensive than other sources, companies and investors aren’t especially eager to pour billions of dollars into plants that typically operate for 40 to 60 years. Researchers at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA, expect that all of the........

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