Trump is reviving large sales of coal from public lands. Will anyone want it?

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials in the coming days are set to hold the government's biggest coal sales in more than a decade, offering 600 million tons from publicly owned reserves next to strip mines in Montana and Wyoming.

The sales are a signature piece of President Donald Trump's ambitions for companies to dig more coal from federal lands and burn it for electricity. Yet most power plants served by those mines plan to quit burning coal altogether within 10 years, an Associated Press data analysis shows.

Three other mines poised for expansions or new leases under Trump also face declining demand as power plants use less of their coal and in some cases shut down, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the nonprofit Global Energy Monitor.

Those market realities raise a fundamental question about the Republican administration's push to revive a heavily polluting industry that long has been in decline: Who's going to buy all that coal?

The question looms over the administration's enthusiastic embrace of coal, a leading contributor to climate change. It also shows the uncertainty inherent in inserting those policies into markets where energy-producing customers make long-term decisions with massive implications, not just for their own viability but for the future of the planet, in an ever-shifting political landscape.

The upcoming lease sales in Montana and Wyoming are in the Powder River Basin, home to the most productive U.S. coal fields.

Officials say they will go forward beginning Monday despite the government shutdown. The administration exempted from furlough those workers who process fossil fuel permits and leases.

Democratic President Joe Biden last year acted to block future coal leases in the region, citing their potential to make climate change worse. Burning the coal from the two leases being sold in coming days would generate more than 1 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide, according to a Department of Energy formula.

Trump rejected climate change as a “con job” during a Sept. 23 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, an assessment that puts him at odds with scientists. He praised coal as “beautiful" and boasted about the abundance of U.S. supplies while deriding solar and wind power. Administration officials said Wednesday that they were canceling $8 billion in grants for clean energy projects in 16 states won by Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

In response to an order from Trump on his first day in office in January, coal lease sales that had been shelved or stalled were revived and rushed to approval, with considerations of greenhouse gas emissions dismissed. Administration officials have advanced coal mine expansions and lease sales in Utah, North Dakota, Tennessee and Alabama, in addition to Montana and Wyoming.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Monday that the administration is opening more than 20,000 square miles (52,000 square kilometers) of federal lands to mining. That is an area bigger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

The administration also sharply reduced royalty rates for coal from federal lands, ordered a coal-fired power plant in Michigan to stay open past planned retirement dates and pledged $625 million to recommission or modernize coal plants amid growing electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers.

“We're putting American miners back to work,” Burgum said, flanked by coal miners and Republican politicians. “We've got a demand curve coming at us in terms of the demand for electricity that is literally going through the roof.”

The AP's finding that power plants served by mines on public lands are burning less coal reflects an industrywide decline that began in 2007.

Energy experts and economists were not surprised. They expressed doubt that coal would ever reclaim dominance in the power sector. Interior Department officials did not respond to questions about future demand for coal from public lands.

But it will take time for more electricity from planned natural gas and solar projects to come online. That means Trump’s actions could give a short-term bump to coal, said Umed Paliwal, an expert in electricity markets at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Eventually coal will get pushed out of the market,” Paliwal said. “The economics will just eat the coal generation over time.”

The coal sales in Montana and Wyoming were requested by Navajo Nation-owned company. The Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) has been one of the largest industry players since buying several major mines in the Powder River Basin during a 2019 bankruptcy auction. Those mines supply 34 power plants in 19 states.

Twenty-one of the plants are scheduled to stop burning coal in the next decade. They include all five plants using coal from NTEC's Spring Creek mine in Montana.

In filings with federal officials, the company said the fair market value of 167 million tons of federal coal next to the Spring Creek mine was just over $126,000.

That is less than one-tenth of a penny per ton, a fraction of what coal brought in its heyday. By comparison, the last large-scale lease sale in the Powder River Basin, also for 167 million tons of coal, drew a bid of $35 million in 2013. Federal officials rejected that as too low.

NTEC said the low value was supported by prior government reviews predicting fewer buyers for coal. The company said taxpayers would benefit in future years from royalties on any coal mined.

“The market for coal will decline significantly over the next two decades. There are fewer coal mines expanding their reserves, there are fewer buyers of thermal coal and there are more regulatory constraints,” the company said.

In central Wyoming on Wednesday, the government will sell 440 million tons of coal next to NTEC’s Antelope Mine. Just over half of the 29 power plants served by the mine are scheduled to stop burning coal by 2035.

Among them is the Rawhide plant in northern Colorado. It is due to quit coal in 2029 but will keep making electricity with natural gas and 30 megawatts of solar panels.

The largest U.S. coal company has offered a more optimistic take on coal's future. Because new nuclear and gas plants are years away, Peabody Energy suggested in September that demand for coal in the U.S. could increase 250 million tons annually — up almost 50% from current volumes.

Peabody’s projection was based on the premise that existing power plants can burn more coal. That amount, known as plant capacity, dropped by about half in recent years.

"U.S. coal is clearly in comeback mode," Peabody's president, James Grech, said in a recent conference call with analysts. “The U.S. has more energy in its coal reserves than any nation has in any one energy source.”

No large coal power plants have come online in the U.S. since 2013. Most existing plants are 40 years old or older. Money pledged by the administration to refurbish older plants will not go very far given that a single boiler component at a plant can cost $25 million to replace, said Nikhil Kumar with GridLab, an energy consulting group.

That leads back to the question of who will buy the coal.

“I don't see where you get all this coal consumed at remaining facilities," Kumar said.

Gruver reported from Wellington, Colorado. Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)

The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)

A mechanized shovel loads coal into a haul truck at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

The coal-fired generation unit at Rawhide Energy Station in northern Colorado is seen Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver).

FILE - A haul truck is seen after being loaded with coal by a mechanized shovel at the Spring Creek mine, in this Nov. 15, 2016 photo, near Decker, Mont. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

NEW DELHI (AP) — A fire ripped through a popular nightclub in India’s Goa state, killing 25 people, including tourists, the state’s chief minister said Sunday.

The blaze occurred just past midnight in Arpora village in North Goa, a party hub, some 25 kilometers (15-miles) from the state capital, Panaji.

Goa’s Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said most of the dead were the club’s kitchen workers, as well as three to four tourists. Six people were injured and are in stable condition, he said. All the bodies have been recovered.

The fire was caused by a gas cylinder blast and has been extinguished, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, quoting local police. However, witnesses told the agency that the fire began on the club’s first floor, where nearly 100 tourists were on the dance floor. Several rushed to the kitchen below in the chaos and got trapped along with staff, it said.

Fatima Shaikh said the commotion began as flames erupted, according to the news agency. “We rushed out of the club only to see that the entire structure was up in flames,” she said.

The nightclub, located along the Arpora River backwaters, had a narrow entry and exit that forced the firefighters to park their tankers about 400 meters (1,300 feet) away, delaying the efforts, the news agency said.

Sawant said the club had violated fire safety regulations. The state government ordered an inquiry to determine the exact cause of the fire and responsibility, he said, adding that authorities would act against the club management and officials who allowed it to operate despite the violations.

Local village council official Roshan Redkar told the news agency that authorities had earlier issued a demolition notice for the club, which didn't have construction permit from the government. But higher officials rolled back the order, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a social media post called the fire "deeply saddening# and said he spoke with Sawant. Modi said the government “is providing all possible assistance” while offering condolences to the victims’ families.

Accidents, particularly involving gas cylinders and electric short circuits, aren’t uncommon in India and often result in casualties, underlining the need for authorities to implement stringent safety protocols.

“This is not just an accident; it is a criminal failure of safety and governance,” Rahul Gandhi, a top leader of India’s main opposition Congress party, wrote in a social media post. He called for a transparent probe to "fix accountability and ensure such preventable tragedies don’t occur again.”

The western coastal state of Goa is one of India’s most popular tourist destinations, known for its sandy beaches.

A fire fighter attempts to contain a fire at a nightclub early Sunday, in Arpora, in Goa, India, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo)

Flames are seen engulfing a nightclub early Sunday, in Arpora, in Goa, India, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo)

The nightclub, which caught fire on early Sunday, is seen across an expanse of water in Arpora, in Goa, India, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo)

The charred interior of a nightclub, which caught fire early Sunday, is seen in Arpora, in Goa, India, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo)

The charred interiors of a nightclub, which caught fire early Sunday, are seen in Arpora, Goa, India, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025. (AP Photo)