Trump administration to pour even more taxpayer money into costly, unreliable coal plants

Today at 3 p.m. Eastern, the Trump administration is reportedly announcing $700 million more in giveaways for the coal industry, including potentially invoking the Defense Production Act to subsidize the nation’s aging coal plants and using taxpayer money to build new coal plants.

This announcement is just the latest in a suite of sweetheart taxpayer-funded deals to the coal industry: Over the past year, the Trump administration has illegally ordered five aging coal plants to operate past their retirement dates, ordered the Department of Defense to procure electricity from coal plants, announced $625 million to prop up aging coal plants and opened up 13 million acres of federal lands to coal mining. 

At the same time, even as electricity costs and demand continue to skyrocket, the administration has been blocking the construction of hundreds of solar and wind projects that can provide clean, low-cost and fast-to-deploy power. It has even resorted to wastefully paying energy companies nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to abandon their offshore wind projects. 

The picture is clear: Expensive, polluting coal continues to get ‘concierge, white glove service,’ while affordable clean power gets blocked, delayed and canceled at every turn – no matter the cost to families. 

To sum it all up in a quote (attributable to Ted Kelly, Director and Lead Counsel, U.S. Clean Energy, Environmental Defense Fund): “Pouring taxpayer dollars into dirty, unreliable coal plants that bleed money is a surefire way to drive up families’ electricity bills even higher. Utilities are retiring coal plants for a reason – to save money. At a time when we need more power on the grid, doubling down on one of the most expensive, polluting energy sources is the worst possible answer.” 

Here’s what to know should know about the impacts of coal: 

Coal is costly: 

• 99% of coal plants cost more to run than it would cost to replace them with renewable energy.
• And coal is only getting more expensive: generating power with coal in 2024 cost $6.2 billion (28%) more in 2024 than the same amount would’ve cost in 2021.
• The J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan – one of the five coal plants that the Trump administration has illegally ordered to operate past their scheduled retirement – is losing more than $600,000 in net costs per day. Those costs, which now total well over $180 million, are now being passed onto households and businesses in 11 states in the Midwest.
• An independent analysis by Grid Strategies found that forcing the continued operation of coal plants scheduled to retire could cost ratepayers more than $3 billion per year.
• Even the Trump administration admits that it’s ratepayers who bear the burden. A White House National Energy Dominance Council member recently said, “All costs end up on ratepayers” when asked about who pays when utilities are required by the federal government to keep coal plants online. 

Coal is unreliable: 

• Despite claims from the Trump administration that coal is essential for reliability, coal plants break down more than any other type of electricity in the United States (according to data from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC).  
• Many of the coal plants that the Department of Energy has illegally forced to stay open have ended up failing or haven’t been running:
  • One unit of the Craig plant in Colorado was offline earlier this year.
  • Two Indiana units are currently broken down.
  • The J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan partially failed in Summer 2025.
  • The Centralia plant in Washington hasn’t been producing power since DOE forced it to stay open in January.
• Even the nation’s youngest coal plant, Sandy Creek in Texas, built in 2013, is expected to be offline until March 2027 because it suffered a catastrophic failure. 

• NERC’s recent 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment shows that strong growth of solar and battery resources, as well as new natural gas generators, is strengthening grid reliability – without  any need for coal generation. In fact, NERC’s analysis specifically excluded the coal plants operating under federal emergency orders. 

Coal is harmful to our health: 

• Coal plants emit toxic pollution that causes asthma, heart attacks, lung cancer, neurological damage, and other serious health problems.
• As of 2019, nearly 3,000 deaths per year were attributable to fine particle pollution from coal plants. This represents a decline from when more coal was used – there were ~30,000 deaths per year back in 2000. 

To discuss these issues further, please feel free to contact Ted Kelly, Director and Lead Counsel, U.S. Clean Energy, Environmental Defense Fund . Ted can also be reached through Ben Ulrich, Senior Communications Specialist (bulrich@edf.org | (212) 616-1340)