Leaders in West Virginia are cheering on Trump’s recently announced effort to aggressively invest in coal, but residents have been feeling the consequences of being forced to rely on energy that is no longer economically viable.

In the September 30 edition of Fox Business’ The Bottom Line, host Dagen McDowell and guest host Guy Benson asked West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey if it was really necessary for the administration to pour $625 million into coal-fired plants, and whether this would ultimately benefit his state.

Benson said, “Some conservatives would say, great, unleash that industry, take off the shackles, but why give taxpayer money?” 

McDowell later followed up by asking, “Do you need this money from the federal government? What does the coal industry need it for?” 

Morrisey’s familiar answers to these questions parroted those of some right-wing media figures and other Trump officials who have tried to use AI to bolster the fossil fuel industry. 

“We’re looking to make sure that we can increase coal production. And so there’s going to be an important use to get the mines to be able to last for another 20- 25 years, the power plants to last another 20-25 years. You have to have that base load power, otherwise you’re not going to compete with China,” he said. “China is producing one coal fire power plant after another. And they’re doing it in order to gain supremacy for AI and for data and technology. America must view this as a national security fight.” 

Data center construction to power AI will indeed require massive amounts of energy. OpenAI recently announced a plan to build a series of new data centers with Nvidia, which would use “close to the total electricity demand of Switzerland and Portugal combined,” according to Fortune. 

The demand is contributing to rising electric costs across the nation, which right-wing media inaccurately have blamed on Democrat-led decarbonization efforts. Ignoring tech companies’ lobbying efforts to keep renewable energy tax credits specifically for powering data centers, the Trump administration canceled $7.56 billion in funding for “projects aimed at research and deployment of clean energy and other climate-friendly technology” on October 1. This figure does not include the other $14 billion in clean energy projects that were scrapped or downsized as of May.

Even some on Fox News have pointed out that this strategy could conflict with Trump’s stated goals for energy production. The administration's massive effort to hinder renewable energy and revive coal is similarly confounding if the goal is to compete with China, whose solar and wind installations in May alone “could generate as much electricity as Poland, Sweden or the United Arab Emirates.”

During the Fox Business interview, Morrissey claimed that “taxpayers were really getting hurt tremendously in recent years with a lot of these green new deal scams” and that more coal is necessary “for the ability of the country to survive long-term to meet the energy demands of tomorrow.” 

Taxpayers in West Virginia are hurting in part because the state gets about 86% of its electricity from coal. On the same day that Trump announced his plan for coal, The New York Times reported that “the state’s electricity costs have risen much faster than the national average.” Though the average cost for electricity is still below average, West Virginians tend to earn less overall than elsewhere, with a 2024 average salary about $23,000 less than the national average.

The Times explained that on top of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine squeezing energy prices, regulators are pushing utilities in West Virginia into long-term contracts with coal plants, even as some plants shut down because of “failing demand for their products nationally.” For example, the electric utility Appalachian Power is “locked into contracts that require it to buy coal at relatively high prices.” 

The very policies that Morrisey and Trump denounce have actually helped spur major economic growth in West Virginia. In Weirton, Form Energy's battery production plant created hundreds of jobs, hiring former steelworkers. When the project broke ground in 2023, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources put out a press release on then-Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) attendance of the ceremony in Weirton, West Virginia, saying, “Form Energy’s investment in West Virginia is a result of the Inflation Reduction Act.”

In December 2024, the think tank Rocky Mountain Institute predicted that West Virginia’s funding potential from the IRA could have been $17 billion, 60% of which could have gone toward the electricity sector.