Washington DC - President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon on Wednesday to buy electricity from coal-fired plants, in his latest bid to boost an industry that is a major contributor to climate change.

Surrounded by coal miners at a ceremony in the White House, Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to strike long-term agreements involving coal.

Trump said coal was "critical to our national security" at the event, during which industry leaders presented the 79-year-old president with a trophy calling him the "undisputed champion of coal."

The order said the use of coal would give US military bases and facilities "uninterrupted, on-demand baseload power," reflecting Trump's claims that renewable energy sources are unreliable.

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Trump has repeatedly championed the use of what he calls "beautiful clean coal" since returning to office in January 2025.

In April, Trump signed measures to "turbocharge coal mining" and more than double electricity production to keep up with China in the race for power-hungry AI technology.

Billionaire Trump is also pushing forward with a bid to erase the green policies of his Democratic predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

On Thursday, he is set to scrap a landmark scientific finding that greenhouse gases jeopardize public health – the bedrock of US regulations to curb planet-warming pollution.