Trump urged to use Korean War- era law for coal, nuke relief
WASHINGTON — The war on coal is over, the Trump administration declared last fall.
But a new front in the war to save coal may be about to begin.
The Energy Department is looking into whether it can keep struggling coal and nuclear plants open by invoking a 68- year- old law designed to make sure the nation has the resources it needs in times of war or natural disaster.
The Defense Production Act of 1950, approved by Congress in response to the start of the Korean War, gives the president a broad range of powers to in effect nationalize private industry for the nation’s defense.
Those powers include presidential authority to require businesses to sign contracts or fulfill orders deemed necessary for national security. The president also could authorize loans, loan guarantees and other incentives to expand the production and supply of critical materials and goods and even authorize the government to buy and install equipment for private industrial use.
Energy experts say that invoking the act to benefit coal or any other industry that is struggling financially because of unfavorable market forces would be a sweeping and unprecedented use of the law.
But those advocating such a move say it’s warranted because numerous coal- fired and nuclear plants are in danger of closing or retirement, putting the resilience and the reliability of the nation’s electricity grid at risk.
“The security of our homeland is inextricably tied to the security of our energy supply,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D- W. Va., who first broached the idea, wrote in a letter to President Trump last month.
“The ability to produce reliable electricity is critical to ensuring our nation’s security against the various threats facing us today — whether those threats be extreme weather events or adversarial foreign actors,” Manchin wrote.
The senator, who faces a tough re- election battle this fall, sent similar letters last week to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Protecting coal and putting miners back to work has been a mantra for Trump, who made a pro- coal agenda part of his platform during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Once in office, Trump rolled back a number of environmental protections that had been put in place under President Barack Obama and were reviled by the nation’s coal industry, which accused the Obama administration of waging a war on coal.
The Trump administration also has been looking for other ways to help the faltering industry, but those ideas have not always been well- received.
In January, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously shot down a proposal by Perry that called for new regulations to ensure that coal and nuclear plants are fully compensated for the reliability and resiliency they contribute to the nation’s power grid.