Trump: Good, Clean Coal Is a Great Emergency Backup

EXCERPT:

TRUMP: “Under emergency declaration, I can get the approvals done myself without having to go through years of waiting. And the big problem is we need double the energy we currently have in the United States, can you imagine, for AI to really be as big as we want to have it. Because it’s a very competitive — it’ll be very competitive with China and others. So I’m going to give emergency declaration so that they can start building them almost immediately. And I’m — I’m — I think it was largely my idea because nobody thought this was possible — it wasn’t that they were not smart because they’re the smartest — but I told them that what I want you to do is build your electric generating plant right next to your plant as a separate building connected. And they said, ‘Wow, you’re kidding.’ And I said, ‘No, no, I’m not kidding.’ You don’t have to hook into the grid, which is old and, you know, could be taken out. If it’s taken out they wouldn’t have any way to get any electricity. So, we are going to allow them to go on a very rapid base — basis to build their plant, build the electric generating plant. They can fuel it with anything they want and they may have coal as a backup. Good, clean coal. You know, if there were a problem with a — with a pipe coming in, as an example, you’re going with gas, oil, gas, and a pipe gets blown up or for some reason doesn’t work, there are some companies in the U.S. that have coal sitting right by the plant so that if there’s an emergency, they can go to that short-term basis and use our very clean coal. So that’s something else that a lot of people didn’t even know about. But nothing can destroy coal, not the weather, not a bomb, nothing. It might make it a little smaller, might make it a little different shape, but coal is very strong as a backup. It’s a great backup to have that facility and it wouldn’t cost much more — more money. And we have more coal than anybody.”