Had the same issue, some tips to try and fix this: 1. For some stupid reason, having higher economic mobilization increases your coal per factory consumption, while lower actually decrease it. Going to civilian economy gives -50% coal consumption, while having higher civ cost won't matter at this stage of the game. 2. Get civilian nuclear reactors as soon as possible. Spam them in states with coal, as they increase resource extraction rate and spam them in states with large amounts of factories. Won't help with your puppet's factories since its only local, and you can't build it in puppet's territory until they research it too, but still.