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.”

President Donald Trump took action on Tuesday to slash regulations and expedite leases for American coal mining, lending a hand to an industry that has been rocked by the push for so-called clean energy.

Appearing at the White House in front of a group of American coal miners, Trump signed the Defense Production Act, vowing to “end the government bias against coal” and “turbo charge coal mining in America.” Trump’s order comes as he seeks to boost American energy production and use tariffs as leverage to bring manufacturing and jobs to the United States.

President Trump plans to sign an executive order Tuesday aimed at expanding the mining and use of coal in the United States, in an effort to revive the struggling industry.

Although US coal consumption has fallen dramatically since 2005, the country still consumes millions of tons a year, and exports tons more—much of it transported by train. Now, new research shows that these trains can affect the health of people living near where they pass.

The EPA finalized a rule to mandate coal ash cleanup at inactive power plants, part of a group of related rules announced Thursday by the administration.

The rule seeks to close a loophole created when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a coal ash cleanup rule in 2015. That rule set criteria for existing and new coal ash landfills, but didn’t address inactive facilities.

Coal ash is the residue from coal burnt to generate power. The ash is typically stored in specially-built landfills.

Central Appalachia is home to the third-largest concentration of forest carbon offsets traded on the California carbon market. But while these projects bring new investments to Appalachia, most people in Appalachia are not benefiting.

The effect of this new economic activity is evident in the Clearfork Valley, a forested region of steep hills and meandering creeks on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy on Thursday went back and forth on social media over climate change, with the Republican upstart denying the intent of climate change policies and the Biden surrogate saying Ramaswamy's "coal agenda is up there with your 9/11 theories."

Responding to a post from Newsom on the climate crisis, Ramaswamy said that the "climate change agenda has NOTHING to do with the climate & everything to do with letting China catch up to the U.S."

Chinese leaders rebuffed attempts by John Kerry, President Biden’s climate envoy, to persuade them to commit to tougher climate action during three days of talks in Beijing, a response that suggested that tensions between the countries are making it difficult to work together on a crisis that threatens the planet.

Mr. Kerry emerged late Wednesday from the lengthy negotiations in Beijing with no new agreements. In fact, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, insisted in a speech that China would pursue its goals to phase out carbon dioxide pollution at its own pace and in its own way.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Mark Christie warned of the potential for “catastrophic consequences” for the reliability of the American power grid if the U.S. does not stop phasing out fossil fuel infrastructure before renewable infrastructure is capable of replacing its output.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules for natural gas and coal-fired power plants are aimed at eliminating nearly all of their carbon emissions by 2040, but those who provide and distribute the nation’s power say it will undermine the grid by forcing plants that generate most of the nation’s electricity to shut down or use less reliable green sources.