By Joe Fassler, a writer and journalist whose work on climate and technology appears in outlets like The Guardian, The New York Times, and Wired. His novel, The Sky Was Ours<\/a>, was published by Penguin Books. Cross posted from DeSmog<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Since the second Trump administration took power in January, at least 15 coal plants have had planned retirements pushed back or delayed indefinitely, a DeSmog analysis found.<\/p>\n That\u2019s mostly due to an expected rise in electricity demand, a surge largely driven by the rise of high-powered data centers<\/a> needed to train and run artificial intelligence (AI) models. But some of the plants have been ordered to stay open<\/a> by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), despite significant environmental and financial costs. Energy Secretary Chris Wright<\/a>, a former fracking executive, has frequently cited \u201cwinning the AI race\u201d<\/a> as a rationale<\/a> for re-investing in coal.<\/p>\n The fossil fuel facilities are located in regions across the country, from Maryland to Michigan and Georgia to Wyoming. Together, their two dozen coal-fired generators emitted more than 68 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2024. That\u2019s more than the total emissions of Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.<\/a> combined.<\/p>\n Nearly 75 percent of the coal plants were on track to shutter in the next two years.<\/p>\n The delays buck the overall trend in the U.S., where coal\u2019s importance as an energy source has diminished rapidly over the past two decades. Coal\u2019s critics say this broad-based phaseout is an urgent matter of public and environmental health<\/a>. Often called\u00a0the \u201cdirtiest fossil fuel,\u201d<\/a> coal creates\u00a0more climate emissions per gigawatt-hour of electricity than any other power source. And the human impacts of its pollution have been profound: A 2023 study in Science attributed 460,000 extra U.S. deaths between 1999 and 2020 to sulfur dioxide <\/a>particulate pollution belched out by coal plants.<\/p>\n Cara Fogler, managing senior analyst for the Sierra Club, called the recent spate of delayed closures \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe know these coal plants are dirty, they\u2019re uneconomic, they\u2019re costing customers so much money, and they\u2019re polluting the air,\u201d said Fogler, who co-authored a report showing many utilities have backtracked on climate commitments<\/a>, including coal phaseouts, often citing data centers as a cause. \u201cThey need to be planned for retirement, and it\u2019s really concerning to see utilities becoming so much more hesitant to take those steps.\u201d<\/p>\n DeSmog identified the 15 plants by examining changes to the planned retirement dates listed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), a DOE agency that compiles data on energy providers, as well as public statements from utilities and the Trump administration. Some of the voluntary delays appear to directly contradict previous net-zero pledges made by several companies.<\/p>\n Neither the Department of Energy nor American Power, a trade association representing the U.S. coal fleet, responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n What Led to Coal\u2019s Decline?<\/b><\/p>\n Not long ago, coal really did keep the lights on. In 2005, it provided roughly half of America\u2019s electricity, making it by far the dominant power source nationwide. But in the past two decades, coal\u2019s market share has rapidly waned<\/a>. No new coal plants have come online since 2013. These days, its footprint has dwindled, with just 16 percent of the overall energy mix<\/a>.<\/p>\n In March 2017,\u00a0 President Trump appeared to blame environmental regulations for coal\u2019s poor fortunes \u2014\u00a0a trend he promised to reverse.<\/p>\n \u201cThe miners told me about the attacks on their jobs and their livelihoods,\u201d Trump said<\/a> at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters. \u201cI made them this promise \u2026 My administration is putting an end to the war on coal.\u201d<\/p>\n America is blessed with extraordinary energy abundance, including more than 250 years worth of beautiful clean coal. We have ended the war on coal, and will continue to work to promote American energy dominance!<\/p>\n \u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But environmental regulations didn\u2019t kill coal<\/a>. Instead, its demise became inevitable mostly thanks to the rise of a competing fossil fuel: natural gas.<\/p>\n Gas has both economic and technological advantages over coal, said David Lindequist, an economist at Miami University who co-authored a recent paper on the environmental impacts of the shale gas boom<\/a>.<\/p>\n As new fracking technologies helped to flood the U.S. market with cheap gas<\/a> in the mid-2000s, utilities began a broad coal-to-gas pivot that\u2019s still underway today. Abundant, often less expensive gas flowed into power plants that operate more efficiently<\/a> and nimbly than coal plants. This combination of price, efficiency, and flexibility made ditching coal an easy calculation for many utilities.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that we were able to so successfully phase out coal in the U.S. would never have happened without the fracking boom,\u201d Lindequist said.<\/p>\n Today, coal is at an even greater disadvantage, as renewable energies continue to make economic and technological inroads. The International Renewable Energy Agency found that, in 2024, solar and wind routinely delivered electricity more cheaply than fossil sources of energy.<\/a> That dynamic has helped solar in particular become the fastest-growing source of power in the U.S<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, America\u2019s newest coal plant \u2014 the Sandy Creek plant near Waco, Texas, built way back in 2013 \u2014\u00a0is\u00a0currently sitting idle after another catastrophic failure<\/a>. It isn\u2019t set to resume operations until 2027.\u00a0The average U.S. coal plant is more than 40 years old<\/a>, a factor that\u2019s contributed to their decreasing reliability<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThese [coal] plants are so old that at this point there\u2019s very little that could really revive the fleet,\u201d said Michelle Solomon, manager in the electricity program at the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation. \u201cI\u2019ve been using the analogy of an old car: Nothing is going to bring my car that has 200,000 miles on it back to being a brand new, efficient car.\u201d<\/p>\n During the Biden years, as technological advancements and historic subsidies made renewables even more attractive, observers broadly believed that coal\u2019s days were numbered. The \u201cwriting was on the wall\u201d for coal, Lindequist said.<\/p>\n \u201cCoal may retain a grip in U.S. politics, but its actual role in the generation system is shrinking annually,\u201d researchers for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis wrote in a 2024 report<\/a>. \u201cIt is a trend we believe is irreversible.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet even before Biden left office, a new dynamic began emerging: As tech companies started proposing billions in data center build-outs<\/a> to feed the AI frenzy, utilities started to take a fresh look at their coal plants.<\/p>\n Data Centers Changed Coal\u2019s Trajectory\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n In 2020, Dominion Energy, a utility that provides electricity to millions of customers across Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, announced non-binding plans to retire the Clover Power Station by 2025. Running the plant \u2014 an 877 megawatt (MW) coal-fired facility near Randolph, Virginia \u2014\u00a0would be uneconomical under any future scenario<\/a>, the company found. It just didn\u2019t make financial sense to keep it going.<\/p>\n It reversed course just three years later. Under its 2023 plan, Dominion projected that its energy\u00a0demand from data centers would nearly quadruple by 2038.<\/a>\u00a0That\u2019s an astonishing rise, considering that Virginia already leads the U.S. in data center development by a wide margin. Known as Data Center Alley, the state is\u00a0home to more than one-third of the world\u2019s largest-scale data centers<\/a>. Today, Dominion says it doesn\u2019t anticipate retiring any of its existing coal plants <\/a>\u2014 including Clover \u2014 until at least 2045<\/a>, the year that Virginia law stipulates its economy must be carbon-free.<\/p>\n Dominion wasn\u2019t the only utility to cite data center growth as it backtracked on coal. In an August 2024 earnings call, executives of the Wisconsin-based utility Alliant Energy\u00a0said that the company was \u201cproactively working to attract\u201d<\/a> data center projects. A few months later, Alliant announced it would delay retiring the Columbia Energy Center, a coal-fired plant near Madison, from 2026 to 2029. The plant\u2019s retirement had already been pushed back once.<\/p>\n Utilities have delayed the retirements of at least 15 U.S. coal plants since President Trump took office in January 2025. Data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration. Credit: Joe Fassler\/DeSmog<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The trend became notable enough to attract the attention of analysts at Frontier Group, an environmental think tank. In January 2025, Frontier analyst Quentin Good published a white paper showing that utilities had already cited data center growth as a rationale<\/a> for delaying the phaseout of seven fossil fuel power plants across the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were concerned about the potential for all of this new electricity demand from data centers to slow down the transition to clean energy,\u201d he told DeSmog. \u201cIn that report, we discovered it was basically happening already.\u201d<\/p>\n But two other dynamics also began playing out in January: AI hype started to reach new levels of intensity, and power changed hands in Washington.<\/p>\n AI Hype Highs, New Coal Lows\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Data centers aren\u2019t the only reason for the recent upswing in electricity demand. Building electrification, industrial growth, and increased electric vehicle ownership<\/a> all play roles, too. But nothing has quite caught utilities\u2019 attention like data center projects, which are cropping up with highly localized impacts<\/a> across the U.S. at a historic rate. Filled with stacks of high-powered computing equipment, the facilities are projected to account for about half of new electricity growth between 2025 and 2030<\/a>.<\/p>\n On January 21, 2025 \u2014\u00a0one day after President Trump\u2019s second inauguration\u00a0\u2014 he revealed a new AI infrastructure joint venture involving ChatGPT parent company OpenAI called the Stargate Project<\/a>, which would spend up to $500 billion on data center build-outs in the next four years. Tech executives announced the initiative\u2019s details alongside Trump during the unveiling at a White House event.<\/p>\n Days later, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he planned to spend $65 billion on data center build-outs in 2025 alone, including one project \u201cso large it would cover a significant portion of Manhattan.\u201d<\/a> These announcements followed a similar one from Microsoft in January: a pledge to spend $80 billion on data centers this calendar year<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the world\u2019s largest tech companies raced to outdo each other, a wave of delayed coal plant retirements followed.<\/p>\n On January 31, Southern Company, a utility serving over 9 million customers across 15 states, announced plans to delay the retirement of generators at two of the largest coal plants in the U.S., both in Georgia. The massive, coal-fired units \u2014\u00a0two at the Bowen Steam Plant outside Euharlee, and one at the Robert W. Scherer Power Plant in Juliette \u2014\u00a0had been scheduled to go offline between 2028 and 2035. Under its revised plan, the company pushed retirement back to as late as January 1, 2039<\/a>(though both plants would be 40 percent co-fired with natural gas by 2030 in that scenario).<\/p>\n In legal documents and public statements, company spokespeople point to data centers as a key rationale for the delays. Last month, at an industry conference in Las Vegas, Southern Company CEO Chris Womack\u00a0cited data center growth as a key factor keeping fossil energy online<\/a>, according to the trade publication Data Center Dynamics.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to extend coal plants as long as we can because we need those resources on the grid,\u201d he reportedly said.<\/p>\n Next door in Mississippi, Southern Company also delayed the closure of a 500 MW generator at the Victor J. Daniel coal plant in Jackson County. It pushed the retirement back from 2028 until \u201cthe mid 2030s.\u201d<\/a> In documents filed with Mississippi\u2019s Public Service Commission, the state\u2019s utility regulator, Southern appeared to cite<\/a> a 500 MW Compass Datacenters project<\/a> as a reason for the change. Southern has\u00a0pledged to be net-zero by 2050.<\/a><\/p>\n As the months passed, the same dynamic unfolded in other states. Alarmed, Good, the Frontier Group analyst, started to track the delays. By October, he published an update to Frontier\u2019s report that found data centers had pushed back at least 12 coal plant closures in the past few years.<\/p>\n \u201cThe data center boom has shown no signs of abating,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cEven more fossil fuel plants that had been scheduled to retire have been given a new lease on life.\u201d<\/p>\n In its own analysis, DeSmog found that at least 15 coal plant retirements have been delayed since January 2025 alone. Together, those plants emitted nearly 1.5 percent of America\u2019s total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n This comes at a time when the world\u2019s nations need to cut their climate emissions roughly in half<\/a> to avoid the worst impacts of global heating, according to a recent United Nations report.<\/p>\n But not all the delays can be attributed directly to data center growth. Some have stayed open for a different reason: top-down orders from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n The Department of Energy Steps in\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n The J.H. Campbell Generating Plant, a 1.5 gigawatt coal plant in Ottawa County, Michigan, was scheduled to close May 31. The plant even held public tours to give a rare, behind-the-scenes look at aging fossil infrastructure, before it shut its doors for good.<\/p>\n \u201cNow we know cleaner, renewable ways to generate electricity,\u201d a Campbell employee told members of the public<\/a> on a September 2024 tour.<\/p>\n But just eight days before scheduled to shutter, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright<\/a> ordered Campbell to stay open another 90 days, citing an \u201cemergency\u201d shortage of energy in the Midwest.<\/p>\n Keeping the plant open\u00a0cost its owner, Consumers Energy, almost $30 million in just five weeks<\/a>, the company said. Though the plant\u2019s closure was projected to save ratepayers more than $650 million by 2050, Campbell was\u00a0costing more than $615,000 a day as of September<\/a>. Yet Wright has since extended his order twice. Campbell now is scheduled to stay open until at least February 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cThe costs to operate the Campbell plant will be shared by customers across the Midwest electric grid region,\u201d including customers serviced by other utilities, Matt Johnson, a Consumers Energy spokesperson told DeSmog by email.<\/p>\n Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is challenging DOE\u2019s order<\/a> to keep Campbell open, calling the orders \u201carbitrary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDOE is using outdated information to fabricate an emergency, despite the fact that the truth is publicly available for everyone to see,\u201d Nessel said in a November 20 press release<\/a>. \u201cDOE must end its unlawful tactics to keep this coal plant running when it has already cost millions upon millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, DOE is telling a very different story.<\/p>\n \u201cBeautiful, clean coal will be essential to powering America\u2019s reindustrialization and winning the AI race,\u201d\u00a0Wright said in September, as the Department of Energy announced $350 million in funding for coal plant upgrades<\/a>, along with other incentives.<\/p>\n Energy Innovation\u2019s Solomon called the funding \u201ca waste of taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been calling it a \u2018cash for clunkers\u2019 program where you don\u2019t trade in the clunker,\u201d she said. \u201cTrying to build a modern electricity system using the most expensive and least reliable source of power<\/a> is really not the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the Trump administration said in September that it plans to feed the AI boom \u2014 with an estimated 100 gigawatts of capacity in the next five years \u2014 by keeping more old coal plants open<\/a>. \u201cI would say the majority of that coal capacity will stay online,\u201d Wright said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Executives from Colorado\u2019s Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association confirmed to DeSmog that they also expect an order to keep a 421 MW coal-fired generator at Craig Station open past its December 2025 decommissioning date.<\/p>\n In late October, Colorado Congressman Jeff Hurd\u00a0sent a letter to the Trump administration<\/a>, urging it to extend the life of a 400 MW coal generator at the Comanche Power Station near Pueblo as the owner, Xcel Energy, works to repair the plant\u2019s chronically troubled main reactor<\/a>. The smaller unit was slated to go offline in December \u2014\u00a0but, in its case, the administration never needed to act. Last month, Xcel, with the help of Colorado Governor Jared Polis,\u00a0began to lobby to keep it open at least another 12 months.\u00a0<\/a>The state utility regulator appears to have granted<\/a> that request, according to an agreement with Xcel and other stakeholders.<\/p>\n This delay wasn\u2019t just due to data centers, though their numbers are growing in Colorado<\/a>. Xcel spokesperson Michelle Aguayo said the delay was \u201cdue to a convergence of issues,\u201d including rising electricity demand, \u201csupply chain challenges,\u201d and the continued outage at the main generator. \u201cWe continue to make significant progress towards our emission reduction goals approved by the state which would require us to retire our coal units by 2030,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Delaying the Inevitable<\/b><\/p>\n Whether the data center boom will play out as projected is still a matter of speculation.<\/p>\n Last month, power consulting firm Grid Strategies reported that utilities may be overestimating electricity demand from data centers by as much as 40 percent.<\/a> That\u2019s due in part to the many hypothetical projects, and a widespread practice of double- and triple-counting. Tech companies tend to pitch utilities in multiple regions as they shop around for incentives, creating the appearance of demand from many more data hubs than actually will be built.<\/p>\n Experts have a name for this growing phenomenon: \u201cphantom data centers.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n At the same time, a growing chorus of critics are warning of an AI bubble, arguing that runaway costs can\u2019t justify the kinds of investment being floated. Even the head of Google\u2019s parent company has acknowledged the \u201cirrationality\u201d<\/a> of the boom.<\/p>\n Critics also say contradictory actions taken by the Trump administration \u2014 citing an \u201cenergy emergency\u201d while canceling billions in funding for renewable projects<\/a> \u2014 are making the problem worse.<\/p>\n Yet even with all the unknowns, one thing\u2019s certain: Coal\u2019s role in America\u2019s power push can be extended, but it can\u2019t last forever.<\/p>\n Seth Feaster, an IEEFA analyst, says even AI hasn\u2019t changed the big picture: Eventually, coal will die, and it will be killed by other, cheaper forms of energy.<\/p>\n He called the current phenomenon a \u201cperiod of pause and delay.\u201d In his view, the technological and economic rationales for quitting coal remain undeniable.<\/p>\n \u201cThe policy changes here may have a delaying effect on the decline of coal, but they are certainly not changing the direction of coal\u2019s future,\u201d he told DeSmog.<\/p>\n The questions for now are, how long the delays will continue \u2014 and at what cost.<\/p>\n\n
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