Trump's push to save the fading coal industry gets a warm embrace in West Virginia

FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. – The victor of this year's West Virginia Coal Festival teen quality pageant walks among the ruins of a assemblage abandoned 70 years agone and imagines the rusted remains of ember tipples and processing plants coming backmost to life.

Ava Johnson knows West Virginia ember volition not ever beryllium what it erstwhile was. But arsenic she makes her mode on overgrown railroad tracks adjacent the abandoned Kay Moor mine successful the New River Gorge National Park looking for spikes for her collection, the 16-year-old past buff says she has heard radical talking with anticipation astir the aboriginal of an manufacture that has brought good-paying jobs to her authorities for the amended portion of 2 centuries.

“You can’t admit being a existent West Virginian unless you recognize that radical hazard their lives each azygous time to marque ours better,” she said.

Much of that renewed consciousness of anticipation is based connected the actions of President Donald Trump, who earlier this period issued caller executive orders aimed astatine reviving an energy source that has agelong been flagged by scientists arsenic the world's astir polluting fossil fuel, 1 that straight contributes to the warming of the planet.

Trump, who has pledged since his archetypal tally for the presidency successful 2016 to “save coal,” issued orders to let mining connected national onshore and to loosen immoderate emissions standards meant to curb coal’s biology impact.

“All those plants that person been closed are going to beryllium opened, if they're modern enough,” Trump said astatine the signing ceremony. “(or) they’ll beryllium ripped down and brand-new ones volition beryllium built.”

The quality was met with enthusiasm successful West Virginia, wherever residents similar Johnson accidental the ember manufacture is misunderstood and that they are bushed of feeling unheard by their chap Americans. But others bash not deliberation Trump volition beryllium capable to fulfill promises helium has made to immoderate of his astir loyal constituents.

Trump and his allies are “spinning a mendacious narrative," said Tyson Slocum, who teaches vigor and clime argumentation astatine the University of Maryland Honors College and is the vigor programme manager for the nonprofit Public Citizen. He said marketplace forces person shifted distant from ember successful ways that cannot beryllium reversed, an sentiment wide shared among economists.

“There’s thing that Trump tin bash that’s going to materially interaction the home ember market,” Slocum said successful a telephone interview. “The vigor markets, the alloy markets, person fundamentally changed. And learning however to accommodate and however to supply the existent solutions to the concerns and fears successful ember communities would beryllium a much effectual strategy than promising them a instrumentality that isn’t going to happen.”

At a ember exposition, renewed optimism

That was not the prevailing temper astatine a caller ember exposition successful Charleston, attended by Johnson and galore others who recovered encouragement successful the Republican president's words, adjacent if immoderate expressed skepticism astir his quality to marque ember large again.

“For years, our manufacture has felt similar it’s been a small spot of a whipping boy, similar a political, sacrificial pawn,” said Steven Tate of Viacore, a institution that makes an apparatus that helps excavation operators bounds the magnitude of ember particulate successful a mine. “We consciousness similar we’re yet starting to get the designation that our manufacture deserves.”

Some said Trump's orders demonstrated respect for workers who gave their lives successful the mines — 21,000 successful West Virginia, the astir retired of immoderate authorities — and for a assets that helped physique America.

“Trump stood his crushed each the mode through," said Jimbo Clendenin, a retired excavation instrumentality specializer whose grandson started moving successful ember mining 3 years ago. "He said helium was for coal. And a batch of radical — adjacent a mates of them present successful West Virginia — said, ’I conscionable deliberation helium said that to get into office.′

"Now, nobody’s got immoderate doubt. He’s for coal.”

In caller decades, the Democratic Party’s assertive propulsion toward cleanable vigor led to the installation of much renewable vigor and the conversion of coal-fired plants to beryllium fueled by cheaper and cleaner-burning earthy gas.

In 2016, Trump seized connected the issue, promising to extremity what helium described arsenic Democratic President Barack Obama’s “war connected coal” and to prevention miners’ jobs. It helped successful West Virginia, wherever a bulk of voters successful each region supported Trump successful 3 statesmanlike elections.

Trump did not bring the manufacture backmost during his archetypal term. In West Virginia, which employs the astir miners of immoderate state, the fig of ember jobs fell from 11,561 astatine the commencement of his presidency to 11,418 astatine the extremity of 2020, possibly slowing coal’s steep diminution but not stopping it.

Slocum said Trump tin defang the national Environmental Protection Agency and deregulate mining, but helium cannot prevention coal.

“It's not the EPA, it’s not Democrats that declared this warfare connected coal,” Slocum said. “It was capitalism and earthy gas. And being honorable astir the reasons for coal’s diminution is the slightest we tin bash for coal-dependent communities alternatively of lying to them, which the Trump medication is doing. Sometimes radical privation to judge a lie, due to the fact that it’s easier than facing a hard truth.”

A dependable diminution successful jobs

In 2009, the EPA recovered that planet-warming greenhouse gases enactment nationalist wellness and payment successful danger, a determination that new EPA main Lee Zeldin has urged Trump to reconsider. Scientists oppose Zeldin’s push, and Slocum said the endangerment uncovering and the request to determination distant from ember dependence “is not a theoretical debate. It is simply a factual, technological one, albeit 1 that does not hap wrong the existent Trump administration.”

Still, determination is nary uncertainty that the civilization of ember is woven into the cloth of West Virginia. A miner tin beryllium a ember manufacture worker, but besides a sports squad mascot, an representation emblazoned connected the authorities emblem oregon the sanction of a meal sandwich astatine Tudor’s Biscuit World.

In the 1950s, much than 130,000 West Virginians worked successful the industry, which past had a colonisation of astir 2 million. Production peaked successful 2008, a twelvemonth earlier Johnson was born. But by then, the fig of ember workers had dropped to 25,000, mostly owed to mechanization.

Heather Clay, who runs West Virginia Coal Festival’s quality pageant and societal media, said losing ember jobs — often six-figure incomes — was particularly important successful a authorities with 1 of the nation’s highest poorness rates.

“It’s truthful overmuch much than what radical extracurricular of West Virginia understand,” she said. ’They’re ever saying, ‘Shut down coal,’ ‘Shut down coal.’ So you privation to unopen down our economy? You privation to unopen down our families? You privation to unopen down our mode of life? And it has, for a batch of people.”

Innovation, not elimination

Trump and ember manufacture advocates accidental keeping ember successful the U.S. vigor portfolio is indispensable for maintaining the powerfulness grid, servicing increasing request from innovations similar artificial quality centers and keeping America energy-independent.

But John Deskins, manager of the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said it would instrumentality a important displacement successful the underlying economics for it to marque fiscal consciousness for utilities to physique caller coal-fired plants.

Natural state is cleaner and cheaper, helium said, and it’s the absorption astir utilities are moving in. Earlier this year, First Energy announced plans to person its 2 remaining coal-fired powerfulness plants to earthy gas.

Johnson wears the sash and crown from her pageant triumph implicit a achromatic formal and sneakers arsenic she traipses done the ruins of the abandoned Kay Moor mine. She talks enthusiastically astir the industry's past, but also, occasionally, astir what she thinks could beryllium a brighter aboriginal for ember successful West Virginia due to the fact that of what Trump has done.

“I deliberation that it volition positively interaction not conscionable the industry," she said, “but people's lives.”

___

Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.