Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) calls this is a step in the right direction.
"America's energy demand is soaring and it’s soaring because of artificial intelligence (AI) which requires a tremendous amount of energy that is used to power data centers around the country which are proliferating," says Cohen. "There are over 3,000 of them now, and there are hundreds and hundreds more in the planning stages. These data centers run 24/7 365 and they need energy sources that also supply energy 24/7 365."
Cohen says that wind and solar cannot do that, adding they are intermittent sources of energy.
"Natural gas can pick up a lot of the slack, and in fact this has been a boon to natural gas," says Cohen. "Nuclear power where available can also do it but there has to be another element to this, and this is coal."
Sierra Club, formally known as "Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” is not a fan of Trump’s executive order. In a statement to media, the group says Trump's order "will increase pollution and drive up utility bills."
Sierra Club says Trump is invoking a wartime law that allows the Department of Energy to compel power plants to remain operational. The group says the same strategy failed in Trump’s first term.
Cohen disagrees.
"First of all, nothing drives up utility bills like being dependent on intermittent, which is a polite term for unreliable energy like wind and solar," says Cohen. "With respect to the pollution, coal burns much cleaner today in the United States that it did 50, 100 years ago, and it is certainly burned cleaner here than, say, in China, India, and elsewhere."
Trump signed the executive order at the White House with coal miners in attendance. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin were also on hand for the signing.
