Trump Orders Pentagon to Procure Coal Power Amid Record Renewable Gains

Presidents have invoked national-security rationing of energy before—Harry Truman’s 1950 Korean-War steel order and Richard Nixon’s 1973 Project Independence after the OPEC shock—but rarely to prop up a single declining fuel. Trump’s mandate echoes 1930s agricultural price supports: using government purchasing power to create artificial demand. It collides with a century-long arc of decarbonisation now accelerating as modular renewables outcompete coal on cost; in 2025 global solar additions topped 300 GW and the EU’s grid tipped past fossil fuels, milestones reminiscent of the 1880s shift from wood to coal. Whether the order endures beyond this administration will test structural trends—cheap batteries, carbon accounting, investor pressure—against political intervention and energy-security rhetoric. On a 100-year timescale the order may register as a rear-guard action slowing, but not stopping, coal’s retreat, much like the UK’s 1926 Coal Mines Act briefly did before North Sea oil and gas rewrote its energy mix.