The U.S. could deploy emergency powers to restart closed coal plants and prevent more from closing, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Bloomberg Television this week.
Burgum argued that Biden Administration policies were hampering the grid, and emergency action was needed.
“Under the national energy emergency, which President Trump has declared, we’ve got to keep every coal plant open,” Burgum said in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “And if there had been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back.”
Coal plants represented about 16% of U.S. energy generation last year, and as of recently, production was expected to stay relatively flat, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Late last year, EIA projected that coal-fired power plants would generate less electricity in 2024 (599 billion kwh) than the combined generation from solar and wind (688 billion kWh) for the first time on record. Low gas prices, as well as increased solar and wind generation, have made coal-fired power less and less competitive.
Coal faced the sharpest decline in EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook released Dec. 12. The agency cites the growing number of renewable energy sources, low natural gas prices and continued coal plant retirements. At the time, EIA projected U.S. coal production to fall to its lowest level since the early 1960s.
Over the last two years, U.S. utilities and power producers have collectively accumulated a 138-million-ton stockpile of unused coal at their plants, IEEFA cited from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in a recent analysis. The stockpile matches the entire amount of coal that Appalachia is expected to produce in 2025 and represents $6.5 billion of unused inventory at a time when coal is rapidly being displaced by renewables, IEEFA said.
Momentum already?
Some power producers were already pushing back their retirements before Burgum’s statement.
The latest version of PacifiCorp’s long-term regional resource plan indicates that the utility could be burning coal until at least 2045. The company’s proposed 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, released December 31, 2024, suggests the possibility of co-firing coal with other fuels or retrofitting coal plants with carbon capture, but for some plants, outright retirement is not expected in the next 20 years.
Less than a year ago, Rocky Mountain Power (RMP), PacifiCorp’s division in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, said its Hunter and Huntington coal-fired would continue to burn coal until 2036 and 2042, respectively. Now their retirements could be pushed back even further.
This isn’t exclusive to the western United States. Last December, Alliant Energy, Madison Gas and Electric Company (MGE) and Wisconsin Public Service Corp. (WPS) said they would shift the retirement of the coal-fired Columbia Energy Center from 2026 to 2029.
Surging electricity demand from AI data centers, manufacturing and widespread electrification – along with concerns about grid reliability – is expected to prompt delays in plans to retire coal plants.
President Trump has previously suggested coal could help meet surging electricity demand from manufacturing and massive hyperscale data centers needed for the growth of AI. Yet energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary since natural gas is cheaper and there’s a durable market for renewable energy no matter who holds the White House.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
