FRANKFORT — Saying that fossil fuels’ role in causing climate change is “subject to debate,” Republican Senate President Robert Stivers touted President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders aimed at boosting the coal industry as a “step in the right direction” toward making the United States and Kentucky competitive in coal production again.
Stivers, who was among Kentuckians present when Trump signed the executive orders last week, told reporters Tuesday morning Trump is offering a “two-pronged approach” by first incentivizing coal mining and distribution and then expediting the process to get coal mining permits. Stivers said the policies put “Kentucky in a good position” to be “a low-cost energy producer.”
Stivers said producing more coal is also a national security issue, so the U.S. can control more of its own resources instead of relying on importing energy materials. The U.S. already has significantly decreased its dependence on energy from other countries.
The U.S. has been a net exporter of energy since 2019, reports the U.S. Energy Information Agency, and a net coal exporter since at least 1949. In 2023, annual U.S. coal exports increased by about 15% and equaled about 8% of total energy exports, reports the agency. The U.S. is most dependent on other countries for crude oil which accounted for the largest share of U.S. energy imports in 2023.
When Stivers was elected to the legislature in 1997, the state generated nearly $300 million annually in coal severance tax, he said. In the last few years, it’s been close to $100 million, “a reflection of production,” which has declined steeply, Stivers added.
The Trump administration policies are likely to be an economic booster in Kentucky, Stivers predicted. Coal production in Stivers’ home of Clay County in Eastern Kentucky peaked at 2.5 million tons annually in 1980, according to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet. Clay County now produces no coal.
In recent years, Western Kentucky — led by an Alliance Resource Partners mine in Union County — has surpassed Eastern Kentucky in coal production.
Alliance Resources Partners CEO Joe Craft, a Republican megadonor, also was at the White House with Stivers last week to watch Trump vow to revive “beautiful, clean coal,” a promise he also made in his first term.
“It won’t just be miners going back to work,” Stivers said. “It’ll be all the peripheral jobs that will come back, that you’ll see that used to be there … supply stores, lumber companies, little grocery stores, mom and pop operations. That’s the hope.”
Kentucky generated about 68% of its electricity from coal in 2023, the third-highest of all states. Over the last 25 years, Kentucky has fallen from producing the country’s cheapest power to the 12th cheapest as natural gas, solar and wind have often become cheaper than maintaining aging coal-fired power plants. The last large coal-fired power plant built in the country was in 2013.
During the press conference, Stivers pushed back on fossil fuels like coal contributing to climate change. He said “the assumption that fossil fuels are a contributor to climate change is subject to debate.” Stivers’ assertion contradicts scientific studies that consistently identify the heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — as by far the leading cause of climate change.
“If it is a factor in climate change, do you want us with some of the strongest regulatory processes doing more fossil fuels than shipping it and allowing our products to be produced in Russia, China and India that have limited or no environmental concerns and produce way more than what anybody in the United States does in the realm of fossil fuels contaminants?” Stivers said. “I would rather do it here. We’re more cognizant of potential impacts, or at least aware there is an argument of that.”
China in 2023 released more heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions than any other country, followed by the U.S, India, the European Union and Russia, according to an independent tally. Historically, the U.S. is the world’s No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases emissions, which accumulate in the atmosphere, because of the country’s earlier and rapid industrialization dating back to the 1800s.
Special legislative session coming?
During the Tuesday press conference, Stivers also was asked about the response to Kentucky’s recent devastating floods, which have renewed conversations about the state’s disaster funds. Before the legislature finished the 2025 legislative session, it passed a law to create a new state aid fund for communities affected by February floods. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said it would not be “enough” to cover damage from those storms. Beshear also has warned that a spending cap imposed by the legislature will limit state resources available for flood recovery.
When asked about Beshear’s concern that the state could run out of funding if it faces another natural disaster this year, Stivers said he finds Beshear’s “lack of knowledge problematic” and that calling the legislature into a special legislative for one day would cost less than the governor traveling to Davos, Switzerland, for an economic forum, or paying the salary of Beshear’s Senior Adviser Rocky Adkins, a former House speaker.
“He is creating a crisis without the crisis existing,” Stivers said. “One day is all it takes.”
In 2021, the Legislative Research Commission said a special session costs about $65,000 a day.
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Written by McKenna Horsley. Cross-posted from the Kentucky Lantern.
