The Trump administration has announced it will direct nearly $700 million to the US coal industry, invoking the Defense Production Act — a Cold War-era law granting the president broad powers to intervene in industries deemed critical to national security. The funds are intended to modernise more than a dozen coal-fired power plants, finance two new facilities, and construct an export terminal on the West Coast, with the government citing energy demands from AI data centres and a desire to reduce foreign dependence as justification. Environmental group Sierra Club has announced plans to challenge the move in court, calling it a taxpayer-funded subsidy for a polluting industry, while coal's share of US electricity generation has already fallen from over half in 1990 to less than a fifth today.