Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
This bill (COAL Act of 2025) requires the Secretary of the Interior to complete and, where needed, publish draft environmental assessments and implementing regulations, finalize fair market values, take all intermediate steps, and grant any coal lease applications that were pending under the Bureau of Land Management’s lease-by-application program and for which the NEPA environmental review had already begun as of the date of enactment. It also directs the Department of the Interior to grant any additional approvals needed for previously awarded coal leases to commence mining.
Scope and speed of approvals: liberals view mandatory grants as an unlawful or dangerous bypass of environmental safeguards; conservatives view it as necessary to end obstruction.
Relative to its intended legislative type, this bill is a substantive policy change that imposes mandatory duties on the Department of the Interior to process and grant certain pending coal lease applications and to nullify a specified Secretarial Order.
This bill (COAL Act of 2025) requires the Secretary of the Interior to complete and, where needed, publish draft environmental assessments and implementing regulations, finalize fair market values, take all intermediate steps, and grant any coal lease applications that were pending under the Bureau of Land Management’s lease-by-application program and for which the NEPA environmental review had already begun as of the date of enactment.
It also directs the Department of the Interior to grant any additional approvals needed for previously awarded coal leases to commence mining.
Finally, the bill nullifies Secretarial Order 3338 (the 2016 Federal coal moratorium), stating it shall have no force or effect.
The bill is short and administratively implementable in form, but its substantive effect—compelling federal approvals for coal leasing and overriding a previous moratorium—targets a politically fraught policy area with strong, organized opposition from environmental and climate constituencies and potential for litigation under environmental statutes. Those factors lower its likelihood of becoming law unless it is part of a broader legislative vehicle or receives substantial bipartisan congressional support.
Relative to its intended legislative type, this bill is a substantive policy change that imposes mandatory duties on the Department of the Interior to process and grant certain pending coal lease applications and to nullify a specified Secretarial Order. It contains clear operative commands but provides limited procedural, temporal, fiscal, and oversight detail.
Scope and speed of approvals: liberals view mandatory grants as an unlawful or dangerous bypass of environmental safeguards; conservatives view it as necessary to end obstruction.
These are examples from the analysis, not a ranked list of the most-affected groups.
Scope and speed of approvals: liberals view mandatory grants as an unlawful or dangerous bypass of environmental safeguards; conservatives view it as necessary to end obstruction.
Progressive or left-leaning observers are likely to view the bill as an explicit federal push to expand coal development that short-circuits environmental review and undermines climate goals.
They will note the bill’s mandatory language requiring grants and approvals for pending applications and view that as removing discretionary safeguards.
They will be concerned about increased greenhouse gas emissions, impacts to public lands and local health, and weakened NEPA processes.
A pragmatic, moderate observer would see clear benefits in reducing administrative delay and providing certainty for applicants and local economies, but would also worry about the bill’s blunt mandatory language and possible legal and policy conflicts.
They would be attentive to whether environmental reviews were adequate (EA vs EIS) and whether revoking the 2016 moratorium creates legal exposure or undermines broader energy or climate policy coherence.
They would weigh near-term economic benefits for coal communities against long-term market trends away from coal.
A mainstream conservative perspective is likely to view the bill favorably as a corrective to perceived administrative obstruction of resource development.
They would emphasize property-rights-like expectations for applicants, energy security and domestic resource use, and reducing bureaucratic delays.
Revoking the 2016 Secretarial Order would be seen as restoring Secretary discretion (or statutory intent) to proceed with coal leasing.
Reached or meaningfully advanced
Reached or meaningfully advanced
Still ahead
Still ahead
Still ahead
The bill is short and administratively implementable in form, but its substantive effect—compelling federal approvals for coal leasing and overriding a previous moratorium—targets a politically fraught policy area with strong, organized opposition from environmental and climate constituencies and potential for litigation under environmental statutes. Those factors lower its likelihood of becoming law unless it is part of a broader legislative vehicle or receives substantial bipartisan congressional support.
The bill has not accumulated any surfaced votes yet.
Scope and speed of approvals: liberals view mandatory grants as an unlawful or dangerous bypass of environmental safeguards; conservatives…
The bill is short and administratively implementable in form, but its substantive effect—compelling federal approvals for coal leasing and…
Relative to its intended legislative type, this bill is a substantive policy change that imposes mandatory duties on the Department of the Interior to process and grant certain pending coal lease applications and to nul…
Go beyond the headline summary with full stakeholder mapping, legislative design analysis, passage barriers, and lens-by-lens tradeoff breakdowns.