Elon Musk, the erstwhile “climate hero” who built his name and fortune on clean technology, has an unexpected partner in his bid to re-elect Donald Trump: Big Coal.

Joe Craft, the billionaire CEO of coal mining company Alliance Resource Partners, is one of the top donors to Elon Musk’s America PAC, according to campaign finance disclosures reviewed by HEATED. Craft made a one-time donation of $1 million to Musk’s PAC in June, marking the coal magnate’s single-largest campaign contribution to date. 

Craft, who has deep ties to the Republican Party and Trump, is America PAC’s only fossil fuel funder. All other large donations have come from people with ties to Musk and the tech industry, including SpaceX board director Antonio Gracias, PayPal former executive Ken Howery, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.

America PAC has made headlines this election season due to its $75 million contribution from Musk; its highly sexist advertising; and its potentially illegal million-dollar giveaways. But its previously unreported fellowship with Craft is also "hugely significant,” said Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager at the watchdog and clean energy advocate the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI).

“It’s just surprising to me that a super PAC led by Elon Musk of all people would be taking money from a coal baron who is so anti-climate science and anti-clean tech, given that Musk has built his wealth and prestige in American industry by investing in clean tech and electric vehicles,” Anderson said.

But Musk has more in common with the coal executive than one might think.

Coal-powered clean tech

At first glance, Craft and Musk would appear to be on opposite ends of the energy spectrum. One has made billions by selling the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel; the other has put coal plants out of business by selling solar panels and electric vehicles. Craft funds climate deniers, while Musk has called climate change “the biggest threat that humanity faces this century.”

But both men share an ambitious vision to eliminate environmental regulations, which are cutting into their companies’ respective bottom lines. Musk currently faces at least 20 federal investigations, including a review of SpaceX’s environmental impact, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Environmental regulations, as well as competition from cheaper gas, have likewise battered the coal industry. 

The coal industry also stands to benefit from the rise of electric vehicles—so long as the energy that powers those vehicles continues to come from coal. In a recent earnings call, Craft noted that his company was doing better than expected due to heightened electricity demand fueled by EVs. “Data center growth driven by artificial intelligence and industrial load led by electric vehicles and battery manufacturing are driving significant growth in anticipated electricity demand over the next several years,” he said.

This perhaps explains Musk’s recent departure from climate advocacy. After years of professing deep concern about the climate crisis, Musk this year declared that he doesn’t think the risk of global warming is “as high as a lot of people say,” and that he doesn’t think people should “vilify the oil and gas industry.”

America PAC has subtly followed suit, with one of its Facebook ads warning voters that “crazy liberals” would take away their gas-fueled trucks and meat, a common Republican rallying cry to kill support for climate regulation. It’s a surprising choice for the clean tech mogul, who only two years ago posted on his platform X that drilling for more oil and gas “Obviously…would negatively affect Tesla.”

But Musk’s potential return for supporting Trump is far too good to pass up. If re-elected, Trump has promised that Musk will lead a new “government efficiency commission” overseeing the same regulatory agencies scrutinizing his business practices.

And Craft, a longtime Trump supporter, stands to get a great return on his investment, too.

The coal billionaire running the GOP’s fundraising

During his first presidency, Trump vowed to end “the war on beautiful, clean coal” and pledged to “put miners back to work.” But he didn’t fulfill those promises. Despite weakening limits on coal plant emissions and requirements for storing toxic coal ash, coal continued its steady decline during Trump’s first term. Seventy-five coal power plants closed and 13,000 coal workers lost their jobs. 

It is perhaps because of this that the coal industry has donated far less in 2024 than to previous Trump campaigns, reaching a new low of $7.9 million this election compared to $18.7 million in 2016.

But while other coal executives have stepped back from campaign financing, Joe Craft has bet nearly $3 million on Trump’s campaigns over the past decade. That investment has paid off personally and professionally—Trump appointed Craft’s wife, Kelly Craft, as ambassador to Canada in 2017, and the United Nations in 2019.

During Trump’s first administration, Craft’s deep pockets and connections also bought access to the Environmental Protection Agency and Trump himself. Internal documents obtained by the EPI show that Craft and other coal and utility executives petitioned Trump to launch a failed attempt to bail out the coal industry in 2018, along with nuclear power plants. The move was so wildly unpopular that even the American Petroleum Institute, a fossil fuel lobbying group notorious for funding climate denial, called the idea “unprecedented and misguided.”

Craft maintained a close relationship with Trump’s first EPA chief Scott Pruitt, meeting him seven times during his first 14 months, and wooing him with gifts like courtside seats at the University of Kentucky’s basketball games.

In addition to claiming falsely that American coal doesn’t drive climate change, Craft has made significant donations to climate denial groups. Through his personal foundation, Craft gave more $900,000 to the Texas Public Policy Institute from 2020 to 2022, according to tax records. He also gave $750,000 over the same period to Government Accountability and Oversight—a group that fights back against climate litigation and includes a lawyer who harasses climate scientists. 

And while ambassador to Canada, Kelly Craft faced public backlash after saying she wasn’t sure she believed in climate change because “there are scientists on both sides that are accurate.” Her email signature included "sent from my coal powered iPad."

The Crafts have continued to be influential during Trump’s 2024 campaign. Joe and Kelly Craft were also appointed to lead the Republican National Committee’s campaign finance arm, despite the fact that Craft’s contribution is small in comparison to other fossil fuel executives. The Crafts also hosted a Trump fundraiser at their home in Kentucky in May, a dinner that cost $25,000 per couple.

Craft is hoping that coal will stage a comeback as the enormous energy demands of AI and data centers exceeds the amount of electricity currently on the grid. Already, coal power plants that were scheduled to go offline have remained online as states try to meet their energy demands.

On a recent earnings call, Craft chafed at the grid’s growing reliance on renewable power sources like wind and solar.

“This unexpected new demand is set to ramp up,” he said, “even as the nation's power portfolio continues to be hamstrung by politically motivated regulatory-driven forced premature closures of coal fired and other fossil fuel generating sources.”

The billionaire thinks Trump will be the quiet comeback coal needs. “Our coal miners love Donald Trump. They still love Donald Trump because they know Donald Trump cared about them,” Craft said on a podcast in February. 

Trump has also promised to end federal support for wind power, which he’s falsely claimed are “killing all our eagles and our birds" and “driving whales crazy.” In the first presidential debate, Trump called clean energy the “green new scam.” And two of Trump’s most likely picks to lead the EPA include Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, and Mandy Gunasekara, an author of Project 2025 who claims that coal is “inherently more reliable and resilient” than renewable energy.

“They’re basically attempting to defend the energy sources that make their funders the most money from competition from renewables,” said Anderson.

Electric vehicles are part of the demand on the grid, making Musk an inadvertent ally in some ways to the coal industry. But Tesla’s business plan depends on making coal power obsolete. Last year, Musk helped accelerate Australia’s grid transition from coal power to clean power using Tesla batteries, and is working on doing the same in Hawaii. In 2023, Musk also put out a three-part Tesla “Master Plan” to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, which started with a chapter on how to “eliminate fossil fuels”. 

“It just reiterates, why is he siding politically with these people who would probably like to dismantle his entire industry given the chance?” said Anderson. “It’s not super surprising that Joe Craft is giving money to Trump again, but rather surprising that the money is arriving from America PAC.”

Further reading:

• U.S. Agencies Fund, and Fight With, Elon Musk. A Trump Presidency Could Give Him Power Over Them. The New York Times, October 2024.

Already, Mr. Musk has discussed how he would use the new position to help his own companies. He has questioned a rule that required SpaceX to obtain a permit for discharging large amounts of potentially polluted water from its launchpad in Texas. He also said that limiting this kind of oversight could help SpaceX reach Mars sooner — “so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy,” he wrote on X, his social-media platform. “The Department of Government Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth.”

• Race for presidency has no time for old 'King Coal'. S&P Global, October 2024.

Despite fading from the national stage, the stakes remain high for the coal sector. The outcome of the election could affect the pace of federal approvals for coal mine expansions and have an impact on a proposal to stop leasing federal property in the Powder River Basin, the nation's most productive coal region. 

• Elon Musk was once an environmental hero: is he still a rare green billionaire? The Guardian, November 2023.

But the climate credentials of the world’s richest person have become clouded by his embrace of rightwing politicians, some of whom dismiss global heating, as well as by his management of X, formerly known as Twitter, during which many climate scientists have fled the platform amid a proliferation of misinformation about the climate crisis. 

• A Courtside View of Scott Pruitt’s Cozy Ties With a Billionaire Coal Baron. The New York Times, June 2018.

Mr. Pruitt’s attendance at the game … followed a year of regulatory victories for Mr. Craft, who maintains close ties to Mr. Pruitt even as he has lobbied the E.P.A. on issues important to his company, Alliance Resource Partners. And unlike other executives with whom Mr. Pruitt is known to have close ties — like the oilman Harold Hamm or the coal mogul Robert E. Murray — Mr. Craft has stayed relatively under the radar.

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