The Trump administration is providing support for nearly half of all coal plants connected to the electric grid, according to a new analysis from environmental advocacy nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.
That federal support comes in the form of taxpayer-funded payments, exemptions from pollution regulations and mandates for certain plants to continue running past their retirement dates — all actions the Trump administration has taken over the last two years to buoy an industry that has been in decline for more than a decade.
As of this summer, 90 of the country’s 184 grid-connected coal plants have received some kind of federal assistance, the Environmental Defense Fund found. Under the Biden administration, federal support for the industry mostly consisted of tax credits for carbon capture and money to help communities transitioning away from coal.
Since early 2025, the Trump administration has reversed course. Seventy coal plants have been granted Clean Air Act exemptions that allow them to get around the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Hundreds of millions in public dollars — some of which was originally appropriated for carbon-capture programs — are going to 24 plants, including two projects to build new coal-fired units in Alaska and West Virginia. And six plants have been ordered to continue operating past their retirement dates, which the Environmental Defense Fund says has “already added hundreds of millions of dollars to families’ electric bills.”
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The group’s analysis shows just how quickly the Trump administration has moved to support coal — a push that comes as that industry scrambles to stem its downturn. Despite the federal support, coal continues to become a smaller part of the U.S. electric grid.
The administration’s actions are in line with what the coal industry has asked for. Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of America’s Power, a trade association representing coal plants, wrote to Energy Secretary Chris Wright in March 2025 suggesting many of the actions the Trump administration eventually announced. She floated using emergency orders to keep coal units operating for longer, asked for economic support for coal-fired generators and said repealing Environmental Protection Agency regulations could help keep plants online.
Bloodworth also suggested using the Defense Production Act to “preserve the coal supply chain.” Roughly a year later, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to that effect.
Wright has framed the administration’s support for coal as a necessary step to keep the grid reliable.
“Forcing reliable, dispatchable coal generation off the grid would compromise energy reliability and needlessly raises energy costs for Americans,” Wright said in a statement in September after issuing emergency orders to keep two coal plants in Indiana online.
Burning coal has gotten more expensive. The Environmental Defense Fund’s analysis found it was 28% more expensive to generate power using coal in 2024 than it was in 2021.
“They are propping up the coal industry precisely because it is not economically competitive,” said Seth Feaster, an energy data analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Even utilities are skittish about continuing to use coal, he said, as the plants, many of which were built in the 1950s, become increasingly obsolete.
Gas plants are more efficient, take less people to run and can turn on and off faster to balance the needs of the power grid — a key aspect of reliability, especially as renewable energy becomes a bigger part of the mix. Many gas plants can get up and running within an hour, while most coal plants take half a day to boot up.
Renewables, too, are getting cheaper. The Environmental Defense Fund’s analysis found that almost every coal plant in the U.S. was more expensive to run in 2021 than to replace with wind or solar.
Coal plant owners themselves have balked at the idea of keeping old, expiring facilities online. Electric utilities that own a coal-fired unit in Colorado asked the Energy Department to reconsider a mandate to keep the facility open after a mechanical failure.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last month shot down the Trump administration’s effort to force a Michigan coal plant to stay online past retirement, but the administration has continued reissuing orders for other plants.
Several of the coal plants that are being kept online by orders from the Energy Department aren’t actually generating power. But keeping those plants online is still costing power customers money, Feaster said.
“That bill hasn’t come in yet, but it’s going to be very expensive,” he said. Even more so if plants are forced to do major repairs to remain open.
Despite its wide reach, the Trump administration’s efforts to prop up coal plants may not have lasting impact. As 2028 draws closer and the marketplace moves further from coal, Feaster said he anticipates more utilities will request retirement dates for their plants.
“The moment that it looks like those kinds of policies are gone, you will see a whole bunch of coal plants retire officially because they’re not economically competitive,” he said.
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