In 2025, two parallel stories defined American energy and industrial policy. Coal kept the lights on amidst unprecedented reliability challenges and served as a price shock absorber softening the bite of rising electricity prices. U.S. mineral insecurity and China’s mineral dominance finally gave way to decisive efforts to confront the challenge. After decades of minerals retreat, the U.S. is finally, aggressively confronting Beijing and rebuilding domestic supply chains for the minerals that enable everything from data centers to defense systems.
Coal Delivers When Demand Surges
Grid operators faced a year of razor-thin margins. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. president called the nation’s grid reliability a “five-alarm fire,” pointing to dwindling resource adequacy and surging load growth. Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Mark Christie warned that the long-discussed reliability threat “is actually here now.”
In a deeply important shift from the prior administration, the Trump administration isn’t waving these concerns away but has tackled them head on, prioritizing the coal fleet as a centerpiece of its efforts to sure up reliability. The administration’s work from day one to halt coal plant closures, invest in the coal fleet and support expansion of domestic coal production has allowed the industry to respond to clear market need.
Facing soaring power demand driven by the AI data center buildout, and with strong leadership from the administration, utilities are postponing or altogether cancelling planned coal plant retirements. Coal generation has soared this year to meet rising demand – up 13% through September compared to 2024 – and is proving critically important to combatting rising electricity costs. As the price of alternative sources of power has soared, coal has answered the call, stepping up to work as a price shock absorber to shield consumers. With coal center stage, the administration’s energy abundance agenda and recalibration towards dispatchable power are already paying dividends.
America Gets Serious About Minerals
The Trump administration has confronted the nation’s alarming mineral insecurity with remarkable speed and urgency. The era of hand-wringing over China’s mineral domination is over. No longer an afterthought, American mining is center stage of this effort.
From early executive orders targeting regulatory reform and supply chain resilience to placing mineral security as a centerpiece of the nation’s national security strategy, ramping up domestic mining – and pulling down self-imposed barriers standing in the way – is now a national priority.
Not a week has gone by without a major move to mobilize capital, to prioritize mine permitting and recapture American mining greatness. With China only underscoring the potency of its minerals weapon with a host of new export restrictions and embargoes, this administration has been willing to embrace a new, sorely needed posture to greatly expand the policy tools the U.S. can bring to the minerals industrial arms race.
Industry has risen to the occasion in tandem, doubling down in its efforts to turn America’s resource potential into the secure, responsive supply chains our economic and national security require and our technological leadership demands. In the matter of a few short months, urgent policy work has already begun to put shovels in the ground.
One Story, Two Fronts
In the matter of just a few short years, for both electricity and minerals, surging demand collided with a great debate over how to use American resources and ingenuity to meet the moment. That struggle is now finally giving way to domestic abundance. While policy for far too long stood up obstacles to greater production, and, quite literally, left American potential trapped underground, the smart policy we’ve seen in 2025 – from the administration, from congress and in many states – is turning the tide.
The work is not done. Far from it. But the momentum in mining’s favor – in favor of affordable, reliable power, of secure, robust material supply chains fed by American mines – is very real. If 2025 was the year of course correction, 2026 is shaping up for a sprint forward.