Three years ago, during one of my first roadshows across the U.S., I met with senators, congressional representatives and policy advisers from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill.
What struck me most was not the debate about coal.
It was the curiosity.
There was a genuine appetite to understand what was happening in China and India, the world’s two largest coal-consuming economies and among its fastest-growing industrial powers. Many policymakers understood the U.S.’s domestic energy challenges. Fewer had a clear picture of how other nations were approaching them.
Those conversations have stayed with me because China and India were already asking a different question.
While much of the West debated which fuels should be phased out, they concentrated on securing the affordable, reliable energy needed to grow their economies and strengthen their competitive position.
They understood something simple. Energy security is national security, and affordable energy underpins competitiveness.
Looking back, it should not surprise anyone that the U.S. is now investing heavily in coal. The real question is what took so long?
The last five years have been a reminder of why energy security matters. COVID exposed the fragility of global supply chains. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the collapse of Russian gas supplies into Europe triggered the largest energy shock in decades. More recently, disruption in and around the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated how quickly energy markets can be thrown into turmoil.
Each crisis reinforced the same lesson. Reliable, affordable energy underpins economic resilience.
Now the U.S. faces a new challenge.
Artificial intelligence is driving the strongest growth in electricity demand seen in a generation. According to the International Energy Agency, a typical hyperscale data centre consumes around 100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 100,000 homes. Meta’s proposed Hyperion project in Louisiana is expected to require at least 5 gigawatts of electricity, roughly three times the power demand of the entire city of New Orleans.
AI may be driving today’s headlines, but this conversation is much bigger than AI.
Reliable and affordable electricity underpins manufacturing, industry, jobs, investment, living standards and economic opportunity. Countries do not compete on climate targets. They compete on productivity. And productivity depends on energy.
That reality helps explain why Washington has committed more than US$1.3 billion over the past year towards coal-fired power generation, grid reliability, supply chains and technology development.
These investments are often portrayed as support for ageing coal plants. That misses the point.
The average U.S. coal plant is nearly 50 years old. Most operate on technology developed in the 1970s and 1980s, achieving thermal efficiencies of 33 per cent. The objective is not to preserve ageing infrastructure; it is to modernise it.
The Administration’s recent US$850 million investment is focused on extending plant life, improving efficiency, strengthening reliability and advancing new coal projects in Alaska and West Virginia using advanced technologies.
The U.S. has already demonstrated what modern coal technology can achieve.
The John W. Turk Jr. power station in Arkansas, commissioned in 2013, remains the country’s only ultra-supercritical coal plant. Compared with a conventional coal plant, it consumes less fuel, avoids approximately 320,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually and reduces sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and particulate emissions.
Yet while the U.S. largely stopped building advanced coal facilities, other countries continued innovating.
That is why China and India matter, not because the U.S. should copy them, but because it should learn from them.
China’s newest ultra-supercritical coal plants operate at thermal efficiencies exceeding 47 per cent. The country is deploying carbon capture at scale and converting coal into fuels, chemicals, hydrogen and industrial feedstocks. India is investing billions in coal gasification to strengthen energy security and create higher-value industrial products from domestic resources.
These are not simply energy projects. They are competitiveness projects.
The technologies improving efficiency and reducing emissions are also strengthening manufacturing, creating new industries, reducing dependence on imports and generating greater economic value from coal.
This principle sits at the heart of FutureCoal’s Sustainable Coal Stewardship (SCS) framework, which promotes proven technologies that make coal cleaner, more efficient and more valuable, from high-efficiency power generation and carbon management to coal-to-products technologies and new industrial applications.
The Global South never took its eye off the ball.
While many Western economies became consumed by debates over which energy sources should disappear, countries across Asia remained focused on a more fundamental question; how to secure the affordable, reliable energy needed to grow.
The U.S. now appears to be returning to that conversation.
The question is not whether coal remains part of the energy system. It is how the U.S. builds the reliable, affordable and secure energy system needed to support AI, strengthen industry and compete in an increasingly energy-intensive world.
AI may have accelerated the debate.
Competitiveness will determine the outcome.
Michelle Manook is Chief Executive Officer of FutureCoal, the global organisation representing the coal value chain. She works with governments, policymakers, investors and industry leaders across North America, Asia, Africa and Australia on issues relating to energy security, industrial development and coal innovation. Recognised by Mining Journal as one of the 50 most influential people in global mining for the past four consecutive years, Michelle is a regular commentator on global energy policy, with articles published in The Australian,Australian Financial Review, Financial Times, and Sunday Times in South Africa.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.