Let Them Eat Coal: Trump Accepts Coal King Award While Families Struggle to Pay Their Energy Bills

Don’t buy the WH spin: coal power is outdated, more expensive, slower, and less safe than clean energy – and could actually raise your electricity bill

CNN: Trump is using emergency powers to keep aging coal plants open. It could increase your bill

Washington, DC – In what many are calling a Christmas nightmare for millions of children worldwide, Donald Trump will today be crowned the “Undisputed Champion of Coal.” The coal industry gave $6 million to Republicans in 2024, including $3.5 million to elect Trump, and now the Washington Coal Club is honoring him with an award for his tireless commitment to keeping coal plants open, despite the fact that it could actually increase electricity costs, saddling American ratepayers with a $3-6 billion bill by the end of 2028. The award comes as the Trump administration plans to repeal the endangerment finding — a longstanding legal framework that has protected countless American families from harmful pollution. 

Trump and Republicans have taken a sledgehammer to clean energy options across the country, taking cheap, homegrown energy options off the table and investing in expensive, polluting fossil fuels like coal while utility bills increase by double digits. As Trump drags us backward, China has taken the lead in the race to power our global economy.  

Climate Power Senior Advisor Jesse Lee issued the following statement: “It’s officially ‘undisputed’: Trump gets showered with millions in campaign donations and absurd awards, billionaire coal barons get the EPA gutted and a license to pollute, and working people get stuck with skyrocketing utility bills. Trump’s obsession with banning clean energy is an attempt to forcefeed coal to the American people at their expense. Meanwhile, Trump is sending hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas, handing the future of energy and manufacturing to China on a platter, all while it becomes more and more impossible for Americans to just pay the winter heating bills.”  

Coal is outdated, more expensive, and slower than clean energy: 

• The Trump administration’s effort to keep aging coal plants open will increase electricity costs for American families.  
• It is cheaper to replace 99 percent of U.S. coal plants with clean energy than to keep them running.
• The cost of new wind or solar is at least 30 percent cheaper than the cost of operating more than three-quarters of existing coal plants.
• Costs associated with coal power generation are nearly double the average cost of utility-scale solar. 
• In the U.S., an estimated 460,000 deaths were attributable to coal plant pollution between 1999 and 2020.
• Solar and wind energy are being deployed about five times faster than all other energy sources combined, including coal.