Top US coal boss Robert Murray: Trump 'can't bring mining jobs back'

America’s biggest coal boss is hopeful that his industry will soon be freed of “fraudulent” green legislation that has hampered his industry, but warned Donald Trump to “temper” expectations about a boom in mining jobs.

Robert Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy, the largest privately held coalminer in the US, is confident Trump will follow through with campaign plans to reinvigorate the coal industry and will start by scrapping Barack Obama’s clean power plan (CPP), Obama’s signature climate change plan.

The CPP was designed to cut the power sector’s carbon emissions by 32% by 2030, and Trump may move as soon as this week to overturn it. Murray blames it for shuttering coal-fired power plants and freezing new constructions during the Obama presidency. Repeal would be a major victory for Murray Energy, which filed a lawsuit against the CPP in 2015 that is now backed by more than two dozen states.

Murray, who met with Trump last month, also expects the president to end the classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant in the US, a classification brought in under the Obama administration. “We do not have a climate change or global warming problem, we have an energy cost problem,” Murray told the Guardian.

Murray met Trump in February when the president signed repeal of the Stream Protection Rule, Obama-era legislation that prevented coal companies from dumping mining debris in streams and which Murray called an “unlawful and destructive” attempt to “destroy our nation’s underground coalmines and put our nation’s coalminers out of work” .

It was the 77-year-old Murray’s first visit to the White House and, he hopes, the first of a series that will help push coal’s agenda.

Trump pledged to bring back coal jobs during his presidential bid and repeated those promises last week. “As we speak, we are preparing new executive actions to save our coal industry and to save our wonderful coalminers from continuing to be put out of work. The miners are coming back,” Trump told a rally in Louisville, Kentucky.

While Trump did not provide specific details, he did reiterate plans to defang the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), now led by Trump appointee and longtime EPA critic Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma. Trump said this week he would transform the EPA from “a job killer into a job creator”.

Murray has presented Trump with a plan, part of which would overturn many of the protections brought under Obama in by the EPA, including the 2009 classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant – a ruling known as ‘the “endangerment finding”.

“Carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act of 1971 was never a pollutant,” said Murray. “That endangerment finding needs to be overturned. It’s on my list of what needs to be done, because carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.”

During the campaign Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax”, said Obama’s regulation of carbon dioxide was “an overreach that punishes rather than helps Americans”.

Trump’s election has been a boon to coal, said Murray, after what he sees as Obama’s attempts to destroy the industry. But he has also warned the president he should “temper” expectations for jobs growth in the industry.

“I would not say it’s a good time in the coal industry. It’s a better time,” he said.

“Politically it’s much better. Barack Obama and his Democrat supporters were the greatest destroyers the United States of America has ever seen in its history. He destroyed reliable electric power in America, he destroyed low-cost electric power in America, and he attempted to totally destroy the United States coal industry.”

Murray said Democrats had failed to defeat Trump because they had failed to listen to people like his workers. “I live among these people. These are the people who fought the wars and built our country and they were forgotten by Democrats who had gone to Hollywood characters, liberal elitists and radical environmentalists. That’s all they represent today. They lost these quiet Americans. This was a victory for the working people,” he said.

When Obama came to power, coal provided 52% of US electricity; now it is closer to 30%. The fall is down to competition from cheap, shale gas and the closure of 411 coal-fired power plants under Obama’s administration as more than 50 coalmining companies went bankrupt.

While Murray said new plants using “clean coal” technologies could soon be built, he doesn’t expect that coal’s share of the market will rise significantly in the future.

Coalmining employed 98,505 people in 2015, according to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, down from 127,745 in 2008, the year Obama was elected president, and about 250,000 in the 1970s. Trump has consistently pledged to restore mining jobs, but many of those jobs were lost to technology rather than regulation and to competition from natural gas and renewables, which makes it unlikely that he can do much to significantly grow the number of jobs in the industry, said Murray.

“I suggested that he temper his expectations. Those are my exact words,” said Murray. “He can’t bring them back.”

But Murray is confident that Trump will move to “level the playing field” with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar by eliminating subsidies. “Get the government out of picking winners and losers,” he said. “We have to get the government out of the manipulation of the energy markets.”

Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said Murray was right to think coal had a champion in Trump, but she said she doubts the industry can overturn all the regulations Obama has put in place, or that Trump can significantly revive the industry.

“I live in West Virginia and I understand that there is a lot of optimism among some that coal will make a comeback,” Hitt said. But she added that Trump would be unable to turn the tide for coal. “The industry likes to point to pollution standards for the decline in jobs, but the reality is the market has markedly changed.

“Friends of the coal industry now populate the highest perches of our agencies and they will do their best to unwind clean air and water regulations and we will fight them every step of the way,” she said. “But even if all their wishes come true, I don’t think there will be a big boost to the coal industry.”

However, Murray remains confident that life is getting better for coal. “With the election of Donald Trump, my daily reading went down 100 pages. For eight years I had to read everything that the Democrats and Obama were putting out because I am the CEO and I had to guide the company while seeing where they were going to try and destroy us next. And eliminate us,” he said. “Now I don’t give a damn what they are say or do now because they are not in power.”