Trump, Project 2025 and Climate Change/Fossil Fuels

Project 2025 called for rescinding Biden’s executive order “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” which directed federal agencies to put “the climate crisis at the center” of U.S. policies. Biden’s order also established the Office of Domestic Climate Policy within the White House to coordinate climate policies.

The conservative document not only proposed “abolishing the existing Office of Domestic Climate Policy,” but replacing it with a new White House office that focused on energy.

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order – “Unleashing American Energy” – that rescinded several of Biden’s orders, including “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.” A few weeks after eliminating the climate office, Trump signed an order establishing a White House National Energy Dominance Council.

When it enacted the Global Change Research Act of 1990, Congress established the U.S. Global Change Research Program to develop and coordinate “a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”   

Project 2025 called on the president to “reshape” the program, saying the program limits executive authority.  

“The USGCRP produces strategic plans and research (for example, the National Climate Assessment) that reduce the scope of legally proper options in presidential decision-making and in agency rulemakings and adjudications,” the document said.

Trump did more than that. He has cut funding and staffing at the Global Change Research Program, shuttered its website, and dismissed the scientists working on the National Climate Assessment – a report that is required by Congress every four years under the Global Change Research Act. The sixth climate assessment is due in 2027.

The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society have agreed to publish manuscripts originally intended for the next installment of the national assessment in a “new, first-of-its-kind, special collection focused on climate change in the United States.” The effort won’t replace the National Climate Assessment, but it provides a vehicle to allow “this important work to continue,” AGU said in a press release.

On Dec. 15, 2009, then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson published two findings in the Federal Register that scientifically established that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. Combined, the two findings have served as a “prerequisite for implementing greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles and other sectors,” as the EPA explained on its website. 

In her remarks on the endangerment finding, Jackson said the EPA “is now authorized and obligated to take reasonable efforts to reduce greenhouse pollutants under the Clean Air Act.”

Project 2025 recommended establishing “a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.” On Day 1, Trump did just that. 

In his executive order “Unleashing American Energy,” Trump directed his EPA administrator to collaborate with others in the administration to make a joint recommendation to the White House Office of Management and Budget on the Obama-era endangerment finding. 

On July 29, the EPA proposed a rule to rescind the endangerment finding. “Absent this finding, EPA lacks statutory authority under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act to prescribe standards for GHG emissions,” the agency said. “Therefore, EPA also proposed to remove GHG regulations for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty on-highway vehicles.”

In August, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists sued the Trump administration, claiming an advisory group involved in the development of the proposed rule violated federal law.

A small group of “hand-picked climate skeptics” secretly convened in March by Department of Energy Secretary Christopher Wright produced a report that the EPA used “to pursue the destruction of climate pollution limits for the largest U.S. emitters,” the environmental groups said in a press release to announce the lawsuit. The working group violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires “that the group’s formation be promptly disclosed and that its meetings, emails, and other records be open to the public,” according to the lawsuit.

“The [2009] Endangerment Finding reflects the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community—conclusions that major American and international scientific bodies and the federal government have reaffirmed time and again since the Endangerment Finding was first issued, including during the first Trump administration,” the suit said. “But now, in the span of a few months, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and EPA have sought to manufacture a basis to reject this overwhelming scientific consensus.”

Since the release of the report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has released its own report, which concluded that the 2009 endangerment finding “was accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.”

The lawsuit asked the court to block the EPA from using the report in its attempt to rescind the endangerment finding.

On Sept. 17, District Judge William Young ruled that the “Climate Working Group” is subject to the public disclosure requirements under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

“By advocating for an approach that ‘acknowledges both the potential risks and benefits of CO2’ and ‘weighing’ risks and benefits against costs and collateral impacts, the authors of this report have provided ‘advice or recommendations,'” the judge wrote, quoting from the report and citing language in the act that defines an advisory committee as one “that is established or utilized to obtain advice or recommendations” for a federal agency.

Young did not address whether the EPA can rely on the report in its rulemaking process. For now, the lawsuit continues — but so does the rulemaking process that could result in a repeal of the Obama-era endangerment finding.

Project 2025 claimed that international climate agreements “weaken the U.S. economy with no off­setting societal benefits” – which climatologists reject. 

“To that end, the next conservative Administration should withdraw the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement,” the document said.

As he did in his first term, Trump immediately set in motion plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement – an international pact adopted by 195 countries in 2015 to limit global warming. 

Upon taking the oath of office a second time, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to “immediately submit written formal notification” for the “withdrawal from any agreement, pact, accord, or similar commitment made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” which would include the Paris Agreement.

The U.N. confirmed that the U.S. submitted a written formal notification on Jan. 27. However, it will take one year for the withdrawal to take effect, the Congressional Research Service said in a report on Trump’s order and its potential impacts. 

The U.S. Geological Survey is the scientific agency of the Department of Interior. It has several “mission areas” – such as the Ecosystems Mission Area, which includes the Climate Adaptation Science Centers. 

Ecosystems Mission Area helps protect “public safety, property, and ecosystems” from “biological threats and invasive species,” and its scientists partner with “natural resource managers and communities to help fish, wildlife, water, land, and people adapt to a changing climate,” among other things, the USGS said on its website.

Project 2025 called for the elimination of Ecosystems Mission Area, which the document refers to by its old name – the Biological Resources Division. 

“Abolish the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey and obtain necessary scientific research about species of concern from universities via competitive requests for proposals,” Project 2025 said. 

In his proposed fiscal year 2026 budget for the USGS, Trump called for eliminating the Ecosystems Mission Area and its nearly $293 million budget, “so that the bureau can focus on higher priority energy and minerals activities.”

But congressional appropriators aren’t inclined to jettison the Ecosystems Mission Area, which scientific organizations called “critical to the nation” in a letter to the congressional committees that write the spending bills for the Interior Department.

In July, the House and Senate committees passed appropriations bills for the department that would provide $289.8 billion and $307.9 billion, respectively, for the Ecosystems Mission Area.

The office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is the research arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Known informally as NOAA Research or by its acronym OAR, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research “provides the research foundation for understanding the complex systems that support our planet” and “enables better forecasts, earlier warnings for natural disasters, and a greater understanding of the Earth,” NOAA says on its “about us” page.

On page 676, Project 2025 described OAR as “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism,” saying “its climate-change research should be disbanded.” 

Trump proposed just that, although he has received bipartisan pushback from Congress.

In its proposed FY2026 budget, NOAA said it would eliminate OAR and terminate all of its climate research. The budget document said that the climate research cuts alone totalled roughly $220 million.   

“NOAA is proposing to eliminate Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) as a NOAA Line Office and transfer several activities to the National Ocean Service (NOS) and the National Weather Service (NWS),” the budget document said, referring to other NOAA offices.    

After the deadly Texas flooding in July, House Republican appropriators in Congress on July 14 presented a more modest 6% cut to NOAA’s overall budget in the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, according to E&E News. 

In releasing the budget, a GOP-controlled appropriations subcommittee said its proposed spending bill would reduce “spending on reckless climate change efforts.” But the full committee report released Sept. 12 said that OAR would receive nearly $667 million — down about 10% from what the office received in fiscal year 2024. OAR’s climate research would be cut to $209 million, according to the House committee report, down about 5%.

The Senate appropriations bill cut NOAA’s overall budget by even less. It would appropriate about $6.14 billion for NOAA, down a bit from the current $6.18 billion level, according to the Senate committee report, but far above the $4.5 billion proposed in Trump’s budget. It would provide $657 million for OAR, including $224 million for climate research, the committee report said.

The Senate and House versions of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act won committee approvals in both chambers, but they have yet to be taken up by the full Senate and House. (The status of all appropriations bills can be found here.)

In April 2022, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, announced Climate Strategy 2022-2030. The agency plan called for spending $150 billion in public and private funding to help 80 countries meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Project 2025 targeted the program to be stopped.

“The next conservative Administration should rescind all climate policies from its foreign aid programs (specifically USAID’s Climate Strategy 2022–2030); shut down the agency’s offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement; and narrowly limit funding to traditional climate mitigation efforts,” the document said on page 257. 

On the day he took office, Trump issued an executive order that called for a pause on all foreign assistance, which would include aid to help countries address climate change, to make sure that all funding is aligned with the president’s foreign policy. A few days later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio “paused all U.S. foreign assistance funded by or through the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for review,” a department spokesperson said in a press release, although Rubio later granted “emergency humanitarian” waivers for some programs.

In March, E&E News said it obtained “a full list of the terminated contracts,” which included “[a]t least 130 climate- and clean-energy related contracts.”

Trump’s executive order has been the subject of multiple lawsuits. But the president moved ahead with a more sweeping plan to abolish USAID and have the State Department absorb some of the agency’s functions. 

“As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance,” Rubio said in a July 1 statement.

On July 18, the House gave final approval to a bill requested by Trump that rescinded $9 billion of funding it had already appropriated, including about $8 billion in foreign aid and unobligated funds for USAID’s operating budget. Trump signed the bill on July 24. 

Project 2025 recommended repealing “massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which … are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers” and “their investors.” It also called for the next conservative president to “oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense.”  

In an executive order, Trump directed federal agencies on Day 1 to “immediately pause” disbursing funds appropriated by the IRA and IIJA for green energy projects, such as solar and wind energy. 

The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, which tracks IRA spending on climate change projects, said the IRA alone “contains at least 119 distinct climate change-related provisions to be implemented by sixteen federal agencies.”

While that spending “pause” has been challenged in court, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Trump signed in July repealed or accelerated the phase out of IRA clean energy tax credits for homeowners, businesses and investors. 

For example, the tax credits for new and used electric vehicles were set to expire by the end of 2032, but they will now end on Sept. 30. Likewise, a tax credit for installing a residential EV charger will now expire June 30, 2026, rather than Dec. 31, 2033. 

The purchase and installation of solar panels will also soon cost homeowners more money. That tax credit will expire at the end of the year, rather than 2032. 

As for businesses, tax credits for new wind and solar projects that were supposed to phase out starting in 2034 will now end in December 2027, with some exceptions, according to Sidley, a multinational law firm. 

See a more complete list of expiring clean energy tax credits and other changes in the new law on CNN’s website.

The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management “is responsible for all Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) leasing policy,” including oil, gas and offshore renewable energy developments in federal waters. 

Project 2025 accused the DOI of operating “lawlessly” under Biden to “advance a radical climate agenda.” 

“DOI is abusing National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) processes, the Antiquities Act, and bureaucratic procedures to advance a radical climate agenda, ostensibly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for which DOI has no statutory responsibility or authority,” the document said.

On his first day in office, Trump issued a memorandum that directed DOI and other federal agencies to halt approvals and renewals of wind energy projects on federal land and waters, citing “various alleged legal deficiencies underlying the Federal Government’s leasing and permitting of onshore and offshore wind projects.”

“The intent of the order is to halt new leasing activities for offshore wind energy development on the OCS,” Morgan Lewis, a law firm that provides regulatory services to energy companies, explained on its website. “The withdrawal goes into effect on January 20, 2025 and remains in effect until the memorandum is revoked.” 

Trump doesn’t seem inclined to revoke his memorandum. “We don’t allow windmills,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Aug. 26. “We’re not allowing any windmills to go up. Unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago, we don’t allow windmills.”

(For more about Trump’s order, see our article “What to Know About Trump’s Executive Order on Wind Energy.”)

The Inflation Reduction Act, one of Biden’s signature accomplishments as president, promised hundreds of billions of dollars to address climate change. The 2022 law included $27 billion for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – the law’s “single-largest grant initiative,” as E&E News described it. 

The fund consists of three programs: National Clean Investment Fund ($14 billion), Solar for All ($7 billion) and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator ($6 billion). In August 2024, Biden’s EPA announced that it had obligated all $27 billion in grants from the fund. 

Project 2025 described EPA grantmaking as increasingly expensive and “driven by ideology instead of need.” The document called for “a pause and review for all grants over a certain threshold.”

In March, the EPA announced that it had canceled grant agreements for the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, totalling $20 billion, promising to “re-obligate lawfully appropriated funds in the GGRF with enhanced controls to ensure adequate governance, transparency, and accountability, consistent with statutory requirements.” (At the time, EPA did not cancel the Solar for All program, but it did so in August.)

A group of grant recipients sued and won a brief reprieve. But an appeals court in early September sided with the administration and vacated a lower court order that had temporarily blocked the administration from canceling the funding. The grantees have appealed that decision, filing a request for a rehearing en banc — which, if granted, would be a hearing before all 15 members of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

During the court battle, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed the unobligated funding awarded under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and the statutory language creating the fund. In its decision, the appeals court noted (as have others) that the new law bars the EPA from recommitting the funding, despite the agency’s earlier promise to do so with “enhanced controls.” In her dissent, Judge Cornelia Pillard disagreed with the majority, writing that the new law “rescinds only ‘unobligated’ funds: Obligated funds, like those at issue here, are unaffected.”

In August, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the new law, which Trump signed in July, also meant that the EPA no longer had “the statutory authority to administer” the Solar for All program, announcing that he was canceling that program, too.

In June 2024, the Biden administration finalized new fuel economy standards that it said would increase fuel efficiency to an average of 50.4 miles per gallon by model year 2031 for cars and light-duty passenger trucks, and 35 mpg by model year 2035 for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans. (The figures are fleetwide averages.)

At the time, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers criticized the new fuel standards. “The only way to meet the standards—50.4 MPG by 2031—is with a fleet dominated by EVs,” it said, referring to electric vehicles.

As we’ve written, Trump campaigned on a promise to reverse the new standards – known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, or CAFE standards. Project 2025 took a similar position. 

“The next Administration must return the federal fuel economy program to the limits established by Congress,” specifically to the “levels aimed at achieving a fleet-wide average of 35 miles per gallon,” the document said.  

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took the first step toward that end in late January when he ordered the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “to propose the rescission or replacement of any fuel economy standards” as necessary to comply with existing law and the Trump administration’s policy goals. 

In June, the NHTSA published an “interpretive rule” that claimed the Biden administration’s changes to the CAFE standards were illegal and that it would enforce CAFE standards in accordance with its legal interpretation – meaning it would not fine carmakers for violating the Biden-era CAFE standards until new standards could be adopted. In a press release, Duffy described his agency’s action as “[r]esetting CAFE standards as Congress intended.” 

The GOP-controlled Congress went even further when it enacted the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The new law repealed the penalties for violating existing CAFE standards – meaning the U.S. effectively has no fuel efficiency standards, as Kelley Blue Book explained in a July 17 blog post.

As it says on its website, the EPA’s Office of Research and Development conducts research that informs “credible decision-making to safeguard human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.” It has six research programs: Air, Climate, and Energy; Chemical Safety for Sustainability; Health and Environmental Risk Assessment; Homeland Security; Safe and Sustainable Water Resources; and Sustainable and Healthy Communities.

Project 2025 called for “reforms” to the EPA’s science research, which it described as “bloated.” 

“EPA’s scientific enterprise, including ORD, has rightly been criticized for decades as precautionary, bloated, unaccountable, closed, outcome-driven, hostile to public and legislative input, and inclined to pursue political rather than purely scientific goals,” the document said. 

On July 18, the EPA announced that it would close the office, reduce its staff of chemists, scientists and other workers, and rename the office as Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions. After the cuts and other staff reductions, the total EPA workforce will be 23% less than it was in January, the agency statement said. 

In an interview with Science, a journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Willie May, former director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said the abrupt closing of ORD and the creation of a new office is concerning. Science said more than 300 ORD staffers took a government buyout.

“Changes of this significance should require a lot of thought and dialogue,” May said.

Project 2025 criticized Biden’s executive order “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis,” claiming the Department of Interior used it to overhaul “resource management plans, lease sales, fees, rents, royalty rates, bonding requirements, and permitting processes to prevent new production of coal, oil, and natural gas on federal lands and waters” and to “dramatically increase production of solar and wind energy.”  

Project 2025 called for increasing production of fossil fuels – including allowing more drilling on public lands managed by the Interior Department.

“The U.S. depends on reliable and cheap energy resources to ensure the economic well-being of its citizens, the vitality of its economy, and its geopolitical standing in an uncertain and dangerous world,” the report says in justifying the need for fossil fuel production.

Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” order rescinded Biden’s executive order “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis,” and called for a policy of “energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters.” 

The president also declared a national emergency to address “our Nation’s inadequate energy supply and infrastructure.” 

Echoing the Project 2025 report, Trump’s emergency declaration said: “We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness.”

In response to Trump’s emergency order, the Interior Department announced a faster permitting process “to accelerate the development of domestic energy resources” that “will take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most.” 

The White House said in a fact sheet the change was needed to prevent a “broken permitting system” from slowing the U.S. economy or preventing “energy infrastructure construction,” although the order’s speedier permitting process does not apply to solar and wind projects, according to the DOI press release. The American Petroleum Institute praised the move, describing the permitting process as “broken,” adding that “reform is essential to ensuring access to affordable, reliable energy.”

Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, said the new permitting process puts the public at risk. “A shoddy review means the true hazards of a project may only be known when the air or water thousands of people rely on is dangerously polluted,” Manuel said.

Project 2025 called for increasing oil production in Alaska —  specifically in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, a 23-million-acre area on Alaska’s North Slope, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“Alaska has untapped potential for increased oil production, which is important not just to the revitalization of the nation’s energy sector but is vital to the Alaskan economy,” Project 2025 said. “One-quarter of Alaska’s jobs are in the oil industry, and half of its overall economy depends on that industry. Without oil production, the Alaskan economy would be half its size.”

On the same day that he signed “Unleashing American Energy,” Trump signed an executive order to specifically open Alaska to more gas and oil drilling – including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. 

In response, the Interior Department in March announced that it was “reinstating a program that makes the entire 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge available for oil and gas leasing.” 

Three months later, the department rescinded a Biden-era rule that effectively banned oil and gas drilling in about half of the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. In a June 2 press release, the Interior Department said that under Biden’s rule “approximately 13 million acres designated as ‘Special Areas’ unless operators could prove minimal or no adverse effects on surface resources.” 

“We’re restoring the balance and putting our energy future back on track,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said.

Also, in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress required at least five oil and gas lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and at least four lease sales in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next 10 years, Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska wrote in a July 28 letter to constituents.

It remains to be seen whether the actions will result in more drilling. Trump unsuccessfully sought to increase drilling in both parts of Alaska during this first term. 

Project 2025 called for the reinstatement of various orders issued by Trump in his first term, including “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.” Issued in April 2017, the executive order established a Trump administration policy “to encourage energy exploration and production, including on the Outer Continental Shelf,” which includes coastal waters along U.S. land.

Despite the reach of the OCS, nearly all offshore oil and gas drilling is in the central and western Gulf of America, according to the Energy Information Administration. (Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico on the first day of his second term.) Shortly before leaving office, Biden acted to keep it that way. 

On Jan. 6, Biden issued two memos that the White House at the time said would withdraw more than 625 million acres of coastal waters from potential oil and gas leasing – “the entire U.S. East coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska.”  

Trump quickly acted to undo Biden’s memos in an effort to try again to expand offshore drilling for oil and gas. 

On his first day, Trump signed an executive order – “Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” – that, among many other things, revoked both of Biden’s memos. (On the same day, Trump paused federal leasing for offshore wind energy projects – which we mention higher up in this article and cover in more detail here.)

But Trump’s offshore plans are already tied up in litigation.

Environmental groups sued to block Trump’s plans, and, as we’ve written, they may have a case.

Biden issued the memorandum under the authority of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows presidents to protect unleased lands of the outer continental shelf from oil and gas development. A federal judge ruled in 2019 that only Congress can overturn a presidential memorandum issued under the OCSLA. The reconciliation bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandates offshore lease sales in the Gulf Coast and Alaska’s Cook Inlet, according to American Energy Alliance, but it did not address other offshore OCS areas. 

The Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana is the most productive region for U.S. coal production. The Wyoming State Geological Survey calls the coal field “the most prolific in the world.”

The Bureau of Land Management reported that 85% of all coal production on federal lands comes from the Powder River Basin. 

After the presidential election, the Biden administration last year issued a moratorium on new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin “in order to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a proxy for climate change.” 

Project 2025 recommended working “with the congressional delegations and governors of Wyoming and Montana to restart the [coal leasing] program immediately.”

In July, BLM took the first step toward lifting the moratorium when it published a notice of intent in the Federal Register to reconsider the Biden-era rule. “The BLM is considering updates to identify areas that may be suitable for future coal leasing,” the bureau said in a July 7 press release, citing the move as an effort to implement Trump’s executive order “Unleashing American Energy.”

It is one of many steps that the Trump administration has taken to jump-start the struggling coal industry, which accounted for only 9% of U.S. energy consumption in 2023 – down from 37% in 1950, according to the EIA. 

In late September, the Interior Department announced that 13.1 million acres of federal land would be open for coal leasing, and the Energy Department said $625 million would be used “to expand and reinvigorate America’s coal industry.”