PUBLIC LANDS WATCH

Federal Coal Lands — Nationwide Leasing Expansion

Nationwide — 13.1 million acres opened, concentrated in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming · Cross-cutting policy threat (not a single site) — federal coal leasing program · managed by Bureau of Land Management / Department of the Interior; U.S. Department of Agriculture (National Forest System coal)

Status: Active — acreage opened and royalty rate cut; lease sales not yet documented Threat: Coal leasing expansion — mineral withdrawal reversal and royalty reduction
Scope
System-wide policy file — not a single location
Coordinates
44.5, -105.5
Page last verified
2026-08-17
Site maintainer of record
Alicen M.
Last edit
2026-08-17 by Alicen M.
File
/federal-coal-leasing

01 — Historical & Cultural Record

Federal coal leasing was subject to a programmatic pause commonly called the Jewell Moratorium, imposed under Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, pending a review of the federal coal program. A fuller designation and policy history — the moratorium's date, scope, and the review it accompanied — has not been retrieved as a primary document for this page and is not summarized here beyond what Executive Order 14261 itself recites.1

02 — Current Threat

The order. Executive Order 14261, "Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241," was signed April 8, 2025 and published in the Federal Register on April 14, 2025 (doc. 2025-06380). Section 5, "Lifting Barriers to Coal Mining on Federal Lands," directs the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture to prioritize and expedite coal leasing on federal lands holding coal resources; section 5(b) directs Interior to "acknowledge the end of the Jewell Moratorium by ordering the publication of a notice in the Federal Register terminating the 'Environmental Impact Statement Analyzing the Potential Environmental Effects from Maintaining Secretary Jewell's Coal Leasing Moratorium'."12

The stated purpose is expressly tied to artificial intelligence. Section 1 of the order states: "Our Nation's beautiful clean coal resources will be critical to meeting the rise in electricity demand due to the resurgence of domestic manufacturing and the construction of artificial intelligence data processing centers." Section 10 is titled "Powering Artificial Intelligence Data Centers" and directs the Secretaries of the Interior, Commerce, and Energy to identify regions where coal infrastructure can support AI data centers and to assess expanding coal-based power for AI and high-performance computing.12 See /sites/ai-data-centers-public-lands/ for the wider AI record.

The agency action. On September 29, 2025, the Department of the Interior announced it had opened 13.1 million acres of federal land to coal leasing at a reduced 7% royalty rate, citing both Executive Order 14261 and Executive Order 14241, "Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production," as its authority.3

A precision note this page keeps deliberately. The Interior and BLM press release announcing the 13.1 million acres and the 7% royalty does not itself mention artificial intelligence or data centers. The AI rationale appears in Executive Order 14261, which the release invokes as authority. This page states the linkage as it exists in the documents — an agency action taken under an order whose stated purpose includes powering AI data centers — and does not attribute an AI motive to the agency action itself.31

03 — Documented Impact: Environmental

Not yet documented — no environmental assessment, emissions estimate, or habitat analysis specific to the 13.1 million acres opened has been retrieved for this page.

One overlap with an existing case file is on the record: the Kaiparowits Plateau coal field within the former boundary of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument holds a substantial technically recoverable coal resource, and lands excised from that monument on July 13, 2026 are scheduled to reopen to mineral leasing on or about September 11, 2026. No coal lease sale inside that excised area has been confirmed. See /sites/grand-staircase-escalante/.13

03 — Documented Impact: Cultural & Archaeological

Not yet documented.

03 — Documented Impact: Economic & Fiscal

The federal coal royalty rate was cut to 7%.3 A quantified estimate of forgone federal royalty revenue at that rate, against production volumes, has not been identified in current sourcing, nor has a projection of lease revenue from the 13.1 million acres opened.

Related demand-side context appears in the Department of Energy's Resource Adequacy Report of July 7, 2025, which estimates roughly 100 GW of new peak supply needed by 2030, of which about 50 GW is directly attributable to data centers, and frames preventing coal and gas retirements as necessary to win what it calls the AI arms race.4

03 — Documented Impact: Legal Status

Not yet documented — no litigation challenging the September 29, 2025 action or the ending of the Jewell Moratorium has been identified in current sourcing as of August 17, 2026. This is an open research question, not a finding that no challenge exists.

Separately, the Department of Energy has issued more than 40 emergency orders under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act since May 2025, keeping upward of 4.5 GW of coal generation online — for example Order 202-25-3 covering the J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan (May 23, 2025), TransAlta Centralia in Washington (December 16, 2025), and NIPSCO and CenterPoint units in Indiana (December 23, 2025). The orders themselves are grounded in Federal Power Act reliability emergencies; the AI framing appears in DOE's Resource Adequacy Report and in Secretary statements rather than verbatim in every order.564

03 — Documented Impact: Human Health

Not yet documented.

03 — Tribal / Public Consultation Status

Not yet documented — the tribal consultation and public comment record for the September 29, 2025 action and for the Federal Register notice ending the Jewell Moratorium has not been retrieved for this page.

04 — Named Companies & Responsible Parties

05 — Recorded Opposition & Support

06 — Timeline of Developments

07 — Sources

Primary

Secondary

Corrections Log

2026-08-17 — corrections from a primary-source verification pass. Two changes after checking the White House and Interior texts directly:

Verified unchanged: the 13.1 million acres, the 7% royalty rate, the September 29, 2025 date, and — importantly for this page's central precision note — that the Interior release contains no mention of artificial intelligence or data centers.

Take Action

No open federal comment period identified for the September 29, 2025 action as of last verification.

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