The Trump administration is reviving a goal from Donald Trump’s first term as president: to reverse the decades-long trend of coal power plant closures and rebuild the US coal industry.
The White House released executive orders, which it calls an effort to reinvigorate the “beautiful clean coal industry.” One order says coal power would lower energy costs and provide more reliable power while providing jobs.
One of the orders declares an energy “emergency,” which grants an up to two-year exemption for coal power plants from enforcement of EPA clean air and mercury rules. These rules, enforced under the Clean Air Act, grant exceptions for enforcement if it is in the national security interest of the US.
Trump also directed the energy secretary to evaluate electric reliability and use emergency powers to keep electric generating units operating and maintain reliability. For the coal mining industry, the orders also expand access to coal reserves, including those on federally managed land, and streamline permitting processes.
"All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened if they're modern enough or they'll be ripped down and brand-new ones will be built," Trump said at a White House event, going on to say that the coal industry had been abandoned.
Proponents of these actions say coal, gas and nuclear power units currently at risk of closure could be helped by these orders. The orders also mention coal power could be useful to meet the electricity demand from newly built data centers, specifically those dealing with artificial intelligence (AI).
At an event at the White House, East Kentucky Power Cooperative President and CEO Tony Campbell thanked the president for his executive orders to bolster coal power.
“America must keep coal plants open and running to ensure reliable electricity when we need it most,” he said. “To meet growing demand over the next decade and ensure fuel security, America will need more always-available power, such as coal.”
Trump’s newly established National Energy Dominance Council is led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who as North Dakota governor in 2021 campaigned to sell the 1,151 MW Coal Creek Station from Minnesota cooperative Great River Energy to Rainbow Energy, thus keeping the plant operational. However, this is one plant that bucked the overall trend of coal plants shutting down over the past 25 years.
Since 2000, an estimated 780 units at coal-fired power plants have shut down, according to The New York Times. During that time, renewable energy capacity has grown, but the most significant cause for coal’s decline was not government regulation or clean air laws, but cheap natural gas.
Over the same period, the power generation industry placed a large bet on gas-fired power, which has grown to provide 43% of power generation. Coal, meanwhile, has fallen to about 16%.
Compounding the problem, many coal power plants are nearing the end of their useful lifetime. The average operating coal-fired unit in the US is 45 years old, according to the Energy Information Administration. Most coal units retire after about 50 years of use, typically closing when operating costs outstrip the plant’s value to the power system.
One such coal plant that is slated for closure in 2028 is the 1,285 MW Craig Station in Colorado, operated by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and partially owned by PacifiCorp, Salt River Project, Platte River Power Authority and Xcel Energy. The current plan is for the plant’s unit 1 to shut at the end of 2025, and the remaining units 2 and 3 will close in 2028.
The loss in generation will be addressed with a 307 MW natural gas-fired power and 200 MW of battery energy storage capacity, according to the Colorado Sun. Tri-State is also planning to source more solar and wind power, as well as extra energy storage capacity.
In Trump's first term, there were several efforts intended to bolster the coal power industry, but the pace of plant closures did not slow. Energy Secretary Rick Perry in 2017 directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue a cost recovery rule for coal and nuclear plants, which was rejected in 2018 by all five FERC commissioners on the grounds that the plan ignored other types of power generation that could boost power grid reliability.
Rising demand for electricity has led for some calls to delay, stop or reverse coal plant closures, but this is a decades long trend that is mostly driven by the economics of power plant fuel – natural gas remains cheaper than coal.
The non-profit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) called the effort to reopen shuttered coal plants “a fool’s errand,” and cited their own research that found few, if any, of the 102 coal plants closed over the past four years were good candidates for restarting.
The plan also does not include the many coal power plants still in operation that are running below their nameplate capacity because running them at full capacity does not make economic sense on a cost-per-megawatt basis.
“Our analysis found that of the 102 units, 24 have been demolished, 13 have been converted to gas, one has been converted to oil, and all units have a median age of 56 years,” said Dennis Wamsted, IEEFA energy data analyst. “Plants that have been out of commission for over 4 years and are old would be expensive and economically inefficient to restart.”
The R Street Institute, a right-libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., opposed the plan on the grounds that the federal government should not pick winners and losers.
The organization takes issue with Trump’s invoking of the Defense Production Act, saying the “national defense” definition in the law is overly broad and is frequently used by presidents to push their own pet projects.
“The mandate from voters in 2024 was a rejection of Biden's failed economic forays into central planning, but for some reason the Trump administration is doubling down on exactly that approach,” said Philip Rossetti, a resident senior fellow for energy policy at The R Street Institute. “There is no economic or security reason for the government to use taxpayer dollars and government interventions to protect the coal industry, period.”
