While presenting a series of executive orders conceived to increase electricity generation from coal, President Donald Trump misleadingly suggested that environmental regulations were to blame for the industry’s decline, wrongly said that coal plants are being opened “all over Germany,” and misleadingly, and repeatedly, referred to coal as “clean.”

Experts agree the main culprit for the decrease in coal-fired power in recent decades was the surge of more cost-effective and cleaner kinds of energy, especially natural gas. In Germany, a handful of old plants were fired back up in 2022, but were closed again in 2024. Germany plans to end coal-fired power generation by 2038. Also, coal combustion emits more carbon emissions than any other fossil fuel used to produce power, not to mention other pollutants.

“This is a very important day to me because we’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned despite the fact that it was just about the best — it is certainly the best in terms of power,” Trump, who promised and failed to revive the coal industry during his first term, said on April 8, surrounded by coal miners. “Today we’re taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers — we’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all.”