For the past year, the Trump administration has repeatedly issued orders for five aging coal plants in four states to remain open past their scheduled closures, citing an unspecified “energy emergency” that supposedly threatens the reliability of the U.S. electricity supply.
The Department of Energy has continued to renew these directives every 90 days even though one plant has yet to burn any coal at all and another has requested that it be allowed to expire. Keeping the plants open has already cost hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly to be paid by electricity ratepayers.
The administration is strongly pushing to revive coal in the United States, rolling back regulations on emissions and offering funding for plant upgrades while ignoring the significant health risks of burning coal as well as the increasingly glaring inability of coal to compete economically with other electricity sources.
The J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan has reported $180 million in expenses in running the facility since May of 2025. The Centralia in Washington State reported nearly $20 million in costs during the first three months of the emergency order even though it has not burned any coal. The state has passed a law that the plant is to be covered by the state’s cap-and-trade law as well as placing a sales tax on coal.
Multiple states and various nonprofit groups are fighting the administration’s orders to burn coal in court. They are arguing that the Department of Energy has provided no justification for its use of emergency orders. Meanwhile, 2025 saw the first increase in coal use in the U.S. in many years.
