The National Coal Council is back. Yesterday the reestablished council met for the first time after being disbanded during the previous administration.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright were in attendance where they noted coal is key to lowering electricity prices and providing the 30-50 gigawatts of power needed for U.S. leadership in AI.

Later yesterday, Secretary Wright spoke at the U.S. Energy Association's State of the Industry Forum where he had a strong message advocating for coal, telling the audience: "It's by far and away, the world's largest source of electricity generation … and it will be the largest source of global electricity generation for decades to come."

He noted that the Department of Energy has stopped the closure of 17 GW of coal power in the U.S. as it looks to reinforce the nation's grid.

And the grid and power prices are front and center at the White House today.

According to reporting, the Trump administration is planning to propose that the PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest grid operator, hold an emergency auction in which tech companies would bid to have new power plants built.

The directive, expected at event today with several northeastern governors, comes as a response to surging electricity prices driven by the data center boom.

And this week Amazon signed a new deal to buy copper from Rio Tinto for its data centers produced from a special process using microorganisms to remove copper from sulphide ores.

Rio Tinto late last year began using the bioleaching process to extract copper from U.S. ores that are traditionally hard to process and often become waste.