Photograph by Shtroxy / Connected Archives
words by miranda green
It has been scarily hot where I live in Los Angeles. At a time of year when we normally have highs in the upper 60s and a strong chance of rain, temperatures have instead hovered in the mid-90s. Southern California set more than two dozen daily heat records last Thursday alone. Two weeks of well-above-average temperatures have my climate reporter alarm bells going off, especially as we edge closer to fire season. This is not normal.
Across the Pacific Ocean, heavy rains across Hawai’i forced thousands of people to evacuate. Unprecedented flooding hit some of Maui’s burn scar, where the devastating 2023 Lahaina fire occurred. The island of Oahu is experiencing the worst flooding in two decades, with damage estimated at more than $1 billion. Officials released warnings that Oahu’s 120-year-old Wahiawa dam could fail.
These different disasters have a commonality: the accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere. Across the globe, human-caused climate change makes winters shorter and summers hotter. Rising temperatures cause intense rainfall in some areas, and droughts leading to wildfires in others.
This damage will continue unless and until the world reverses its reliance on fossil fuels. In the meantime, the United States government is doubling down on fossil fuels, and one energy source in particular: coal.
Trump calls it “beautiful, clean coal,” but there’s nothing clean about it. Coal is the dirtiest fuel source in the world, and because it contains more carbon than gas or oil, it’s been found to be the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Coal’s heavy reliance on labor-intensive extraction also makes it one of the most expensive fuel sources, which is why power companies across the U.S. have increasingly moved away from it. Coal power became 28% more expensive between 2021 and 2024, outpacing inflation, according to a report from the think tank Energy Innovation. Simply put, coal is no longer economically viable—so much so, in fact, that despite his best efforts, Trump himself oversaw the biggest decline in coal-fired power capacity in presidential history. Overall, coal use dropped by 64% between 2007 and 2024.
But in the past year, Trump directed several agencies to continue boosting the energy source. Why the emphasis on coal? The answers are varied. First, there’s the ever-rising demand on power grids—especially now, with power-hungry data centers’ insatiable electricity needs. It doesn’t hurt that coal executives were big Trump campaign donors—or that a stronghold of his base is concentrated in coal country.
Trump announced a plan last April to “reinvigorate” the dying coal industry, writing in an executive order: “We must encourage and support our Nation’s coal industry to increase our energy supply, lower electricity costs, stabilize our grid, create high-paying jobs, support burgeoning industries, and assist our allies.”
The following month, the Department of Energy announced it would use the Federal Power Act, an emergency order typically reserved for wartime, to keep open a coal-fired plant in Michigan that was slated to retire after 60 years online. Then, in December, the DOE ordered four coal-fired power plants—one in Washington state, one in Colorado, and two in Indiana—to remain open despite plans to retire shortly.
The orders force the plants to remain in operation for 90 days, but in reality, it’s a carte blanche extension. Because after those 90 days, the DOE has been resubmitting the claims in an endless cycle. So far, the administration has forced five coal-power plants and one gas-fired plant to remain open, even though three out of five coal plants haven’t produced any energy since—either because they need repairs to operate or because there simply isn’t a demand for them. And it’s anticipated that number will grow: 54 fossil-fuel power plants are slated to retire between now and 2028, thanks to the fact that most plants were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and have a 40- to 50-year lifespan.
To afford to stay open, the DOE orders allow power plants to request reimbursement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That means electricity customers are footing the bill to keep plants operating. Sierra Club estimates that keeping those six plants online has cost ratepayers more than $280 million.
“They are not asking for these emergency orders. They don’t need them,” Patrick Drupp, Sierra Club’ climate policy director, told me of the plant operators. “This administration, since it came into power, has created fake energy emergencies to prop up fossil fuels and to attack renewables, simply because the fossil fuel industry helped elect them.”
Coal-fired power plants are more expensive to run over time, due in part to increased environmental protections and regulations.
Following pollution standards, from cleaning smoke stacks to disposing of coal ash in an environmentally safe manner, is expensive. So the Trump administration has worked to weaken those environmental policies, despite the associated health risks. Last April, the White House announced “regulatory relief” for power plants: “Forcing energy producers to comply with unattainable emissions controls jeopardizes this mission.” Then, this February, the EPA finalized weaker standards for mercury pollution at power plants, despite links between the heavy metal and brain damage. The new rule reverts to standards established in 2012 that Biden had strengthened just two years ago.
The EPA also changed rules in February, delaying power plants’ clean-up timelines for coal ash—a harmful byproduct generated from burning coal that can seep into water. A 2022 investigation by Earthjustice had found that 91% of the coal plants that reported groundwater data showed contamination with toxic substances that exceeded federal standards.
John Graham, a senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, told me coal usage increased in 2025. He said he worries the shocking directional change could have major health impacts. (After declines, greenhouse gas emissions also increased by more than 2% in 2025.)
“The main reason we’ve seen a reduction by about 50% of the particulate matter levels in the country is because we addressed emissions coming from the coal-fired power plant fleet,” Graham said. “We’ve had these huge improvements, both in things like visibility and the quality of the air, and improved health and fewer asthma cases happening … I don’t think the administration is fully appreciating that.”
What’s novel about the administration’s fight to keep coal power plants open is that the owners of the plants aren’t asking for it.
“If an investor-owned utility wants to retire an old fossil plant, that’s telling you it’s extraordinarily expensive and highly unreliable, and they don’t think their regulators are going to give them enough money to keep the plant open,” Alison Silverstein, an energy analyst and former advisor to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told Canary Media.
Earlier this month, Washington State filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the emergency DOE orders should be revoked because there is no emergency. The state had planned to convert the power plant to natural gas. The emergency order was meant to end last week, on March 16. That same day, DOE extended the rule.
Last week, Colorado also sued the administration for forcing the continued operation of a coal power plant in the state that had long been planned for replacement by clean energy sources. The state’s attorney general said: “Replacing it with cleaner and more affordable energy resources was the result of a carefully planned process that was driven by economics.” The suit asks the judge to rule that the emergency order is unlawful because shuttering the power plant is part of Colorado’s long-term climate goals. It’s one of six slated to be shuttered across the state.
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Surging Energy Demand Helps Fuel Trump’s Love Affair With Coal
