Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made improvements in energy and infrastructure key pillars of his Make America Great Platform.
Now that he is in office for a second term, Trump -- through his Department of Energy (DOE) -- is endeavoring to invest upwards of $100 million in the restoration of coal plants across the country, and reverse damaging Biden-era priorities, as the Daily Caller reports.
It was on Friday that the DOE issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity in this particular strategic realm.
According to the announcement, the effort is meant to support “practical, high-impact projects that improve efficiency, plant lifetimes, and performance of coal and natural gas use.”
The DOE noted the administration’s hope that the projects would help turn the tide away from harmful policies undertaken by Trump’s predecessors.
“For years,the Biden and Obama administrations relentlessly targeted America’s coal industry and workers, resulting in the closure of reliable power plants and higher electricity costs,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated.
He continued, “Thankfully, President Trump has ended the war on American coal and is restoring common sense energy policies that put Americans first. These projects will help keep America’s coal plants operating and ensure the United States has the reliable and affordable power it needs to keep the light on and power our future.”
The Energy Department added that the Notice of Opportunity seeks applications from those capable of launching projects that will “design, implement, test, and validate three strategic opportunities for refurbishment and retrofit of existing American coal power plans to make them operate more efficiently, reliably, and affordably.
One such opportunity area is the “development, engineering, and implementation of advanced wastewater management systems capable of cost-effective water recovery and other value-added byproducts from wastewater streams.”
Another involves the “engineering, design and implementation of retrofit systems that enable fuel switching between coal and natural gas without compromising critical operational parameters.”
The last realm of opportunity is the “deployment, engineering, and implementation of advanced coal-natural gas co-firing systems and system components, including highly fuel-flexible burner designs and advanced control systems, to maximize gas co-firing capacity to provide a low cost retrofit option for coal plants while minimizing efficiency penalties.”
The DOE’s push could not come at a better time, given the administration’s recent release of a report documenting the risk of grid failure currently plaguing the nation.
This summer, the DOE report revealed that “blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2023 if the U.S. continues to shutter reliable power sources and fails to add additional firm capacity."
As such, the DOE's Friday announcement underscores not just the urgent energy challenges facing America, but also Trump’s willingness to address them.
