(Updates with White House response in the 1st paragraph and paragraphs 4-14.)
US President Donald Trump is expected to make three "historic beautiful, clean coal announcements" in the Oval Office on Thursday, a White House official toldin an emailed response, confirming details of the expected coal initiatives.
Trump plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to fund US coal infrastructure with nearly $700 million, several media outlets reported on Wednesday.
More than half of the allocation is reportedly earmarked directly for critical structural upgrades across 13 existing coal-fired plants, the reports said. The funding will also target critical logistical bottlenecks across the domestic supply chain.
The announcements are expected to include $425 million in Defense Production Act funding for existing coal plants, $75 million for a new California coal export terminal, and nearly $200 million in Department of Energy funding for new coal generation projects and a plant restart, according to the White House.
The $425 million allocation will support 13 coal-fired power plants across the US and help fund upgrades that "extend their operational life, reinforce grid reliability, and keep electricity prices low as demand grows."
According to the White House, the funding will also support coal mines supplying those power plants.
Coal plants receiving funding are located in West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
Trump is also expected to announce $75 million in Defense Production Act funding to support construction of the West Gateway coal export terminal in Oakland, California, the White House official said.
The terminal will operate "24 hours a day, 7 days a week-moving over 12 million tons and $1 billion of beautiful, clean American coal each year," the official said.
The project is expected to break ground this summer and begin shipping coal by summer 2028, according to the White House.
The White House said the terminal is projected to create over 1,400 jobs on-site and support thousands more across the Western US, including miners, railroad workers, port workers, engineers and construction workers.
Trump is expected to roll out almost $200 million in Department of Energy grant funding to help build two new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia and restart a coal plant in Maryland, according to the White House.
The projects would be "the first new US coal plants since 2013," while participating companies are expected to match or exceed the federal funding, bringing the total investment to about $386 million, according to the response from the White House.
The White House said the combined initiatives are expected to support and create more than 14,000 jobs across the coal, construction, rail and maritime sectors, save consumers about $50 billion in future generation costs and increase the number of coal plants supported or preserved under Trump administration to 102.
The Cold War emergency measure aims to secure baseline power for data centers and secures the grid against energy supply disruption risks.
The administration is scrambling to meet the massive baseline electricity demands of power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers, while simultaneously seeking to insulate the domestic grid from foreign supply chains.
Coal's share of domestic power generation has plummeted from more than half of total US electricity to less than one-fifth in recent years, heavily undercut by cheaper natural gas and accelerating renewable assets, according to Reuters, citing the US Energy Information Administration.