what was said

“We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal. We love it. And you know that’s indestructible stuff. In times of war, in times of conflict, you can blow up those windmills. They fall down real quick. You can blow up those pipelines. They go like this and you’re not going to fix them too fast. You can do a lot of things to those solar panels. But you know what you can’t hurt? Coal.”

— President Trump, at a campaign rally on Tuesday in Charleston, W.Va.

the facts

False.

If coal itself were truly indestructible, you couldn’t mine or burn it. Anthracite coal is hard, but yields to a hammer; you can crumble soft lignite in your hand. (The term “clean coal” is also a misnomer.)

The notion that coal-fired plants are somehow trouble-free and secure is also mistaken. In June, Westar Energy shut down Kansas’ largest power plant after an equipment failure led to the deaths of two employees, and an industrial accident shut down a Florida plant in 2017. In World War II, British bombers targeted the coal plants and stockpiles that powered the steel mills of the Ruhr Valley in Germany.

Mr. Trump has also argued that coal is more reliable than solar and wind power systems, which do not generate when the sun does not shine and the wind dies. This argument ignores the efforts to develop innovative energy storage systems to smooth those curves of supply and demand.

what was said

“We are back. The coal industry is back.”

the facts

This is exaggerated.

Mr. Trump lauded his administration’s attempts on many fronts to roll back environmental policies from President Barack Obama’s administration that encouraged the transition to renewable energy sources, including this week’s announcement of a proposed replacement for Mr. Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan.