Defense and National Security

A new executive order signed this week by President Donald Trump directs the Department of War to 'seek to procure' electricity from coal‑fired power plants through long‑term power purchase agreements serving military installations and other mission‑critical facilities, with the Department of Energy ordered to help keep selected coal plants online. The Fox report makes clear that the order does not itself appropriate money or change grid‑dispatch rules; any coal deals would have to be structured within existing Pentagon contracting authorities, regional power‑market rules and whatever funding Congress provides. Former Pentagon official Jerry McGinn, now at CSIS’s Baroni Center for Government Contracting, says the military has 'a great amount of flexibility' to sign base‑by‑base energy contracts but stresses that executive orders 'can’t drive appropriations' and that bases are physically tied into regional grids where power is pooled from multiple sources. In practice, the article explains, any such contracts would function mainly as financial lifelines for particular coal plants, not as a literal guarantee that bases run exclusively on coal‑generated electrons, and coal units’ large scale means the Pentagon would need sizable, long‑term commitments to materially affect plant economics. The piece underlines how Trump’s promise that the military will be 'buying a lot of coal' runs into legal, budgetary and grid‑operations constraints, and that the real impact will depend on how aggressively base commanders and contracting officers use this new political guidance.