Late Tuesday evening, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued an emergency order to keep a 446-megawatt unit of the Craig Station coal plant in Craig, Colorado operating for 90 days. The Craig plant was the fifth coal power plant the Trump administration prevented from retiring in 2025.
Last week, the DOE ordered two coal-fired power plants in Indiana to stay open past planned closure dates on New Year’s Eve. The orders are the latest step in the Trump administration’s strategy to keep aging power plants running in the name of grid reliability; critics say that strategy unnecessarily prolongs the use of expensive and polluting power plants.
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“Keeping these coal plants online has the potential to save lives and is just common sense,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a press release. Wright added that the grid needs power sources that are reliable in all weather conditions.
One DOE order calls for keeping open two coal units of the R.M. Schahfer Generating Station in Wheatfield, Indiana. The units began operating in 1983 and 1986. A second order will keep one unit at the F.B. Culley Generating Station in Warrick County running. It began operating in 1966. Combined, the three units can generate 950.7 megawatts of power — enough electricity to power roughly half a million homes.
Why is the Trump administration pushing for more coal power?
The DOE has also ordered coal power plants in Michigan and Washington state to extend operations past originally planned shut-down dates.
The trend started in May with the 1,560-megawatt J.H. Campbell coal plant in West Olive, Michigan, which had a planned shut-down date at the end of that month. Two of the coal plant’s units were built in the 1960s and a third in 1980.
The emergency order to keep it open cited electricity shortages on the midwest power grid and invoked the DOE’s authority under the Federal Power Act of 1920 and the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977. The DOE also cited a January executive order from President Donald Trump declaring a national energy emergency.
The emergency order said retiring the Campbell plant “would further decrease available dispatchable generation” throughout the region. As other midwest power plants had already retired, the Trump administration said keeping Campbell running was necessary to prevent shortages during summer months. The 90-day order was extended in August and again in November.
In mid-December, a similar order extended the operations of a coal power unit at the Centralia Generating Station in Centralia, Washington.
“The Trump administration will continue taking action to keep America’s coal plants running so we can stop the price spikes and ensure we don’t lose critical generation sources,” Wright said in a press release.
The DOE has taken similar actions to postpone the retirement or increase the capacity of power plants running on gas and oil in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
What do opponents of keeping coal plants running say?
The administration’s policy to keep coal plants open has faced backlash and legal challenges since the first extension of operations at the Campbell plant in Michigan.
“Mandating aging, unreliable and costly coal plants to stay open past their retirement is a guaranteed way to needlessly hike up Americans’ electricity bills and make air pollution worse,” said Ted Kelly, a director and lawyer at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, in a press release.
EDF is part of a coalition of groups challenging the extension of the Campbell plant in court. Michigan’s Attorney General has also filed a suit.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit that tends to favor renewable energy, noted in a blog post that the Campbell plant has largely been operating in the red in recent years, and the cost of operating a 60-year-old facility will likely be passed on to ratepayers.
In response to the latest extensions in Indiana, the nonprofit Earthjustice said the two coal power plants are “plagued with mechanical issues, and one unit cannot operate without major repairs.” The group’s press release said DOE is now “forcing households to pay more for coal’s deadly air and toxic water pollution.”
What will happen to coal plants in 2026?
Litigation involving extensions of coal plant operations will extend into next year. The current 90-day extensions will expire in February and March. The DOE may simply re-issue the emergency orders, as it has already done twice for the Michigan plant.
Dozens of coal plants are slated to retire between now and 2028. Combined, they can produce 27 gigawatts of electricity, according to data analysis from Canary Media. That’s more than half the amount of power needed to keep electricity flowing on a hot summer day in California.
