A new analysis by the news outlet DeSmog finds that the Trump administration’s efforts at EPA and other agencies to support coal generation, combined with growing energy demand driven by artificial intelligence, are prompting 15 U.S. coal plants to delay planned retirements this year, with one plant delaying its closure by seven years.

The Dec. 12 report by DeSmog contributing writer Joe Fassler says the plants, which are located in 11 states, emitted more than 68 million tons of carbon dioxide last year. It says they are delaying their closures mostly due to the rise of energy needed for AI, though some have been ordered to stay open under an “energy emergency” declared by the Department of Energy (DOE), despite significant environmental and financial costs.

The Trump EPA is also taking several actions across is major program areas to ease environmental restrictions facing coal plants, with officials justifying the moves as needed to prevent the closure of such plants amid rising generation.

According to the report, 10 of the 15 plants were on track to shutter in the two years before Trump took office early this year.

DeSmog, which criticizes those that reject mainstream climate change science, identified the 15 plants by examining changes to planned retirement dates listed by DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), which compiles data on energy providers, as well as public statements from utilities and Trump administration officials. The report says some retirement delays appear to directly contradict utilities’ previous net-zero pledges.

The analysis notes that coal power had been on a downward trajectory from 2005 until very recently, and it cites DOE-mandated retirement delays at the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant in Michigan, which was extended for the third time last month through February 2026 and is costing ratepayers more than $615,000 a day.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) filed a Nov. 19 challenge to DOE’s order to keep the 1,420-megawatt (MW) plant open, saying it will impose unnecessary costs and environmental harms.

DeSmog says officials with Colorado’s Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association confirmed they expect a similar DOE order to keep the 421-MW Craig Station coal plant open past its December decommissioning date.

Meanwhile, EPA has been taking several steps to roll back air, water and waste laws affecting power plants, with officials justifying the moves by citing the need to retain coal plants.

For example, the agency offered this justification for its proposed compliance delays for Biden-era effluent limitsfor coal plants, as well as its proposed compliance extensions for coal ash cleanup mandates.

AI Power Demand

However, data center development is the largest driver of coal plants delaying retirements, the DeSmog analysis finds, citing a 2023 decision by Dominion Energy to reverse its 2020 plan to retire its Clover Power Station by 2025. At the time, it found that running the 877 MW facility would be uneconomical under any future scenario.

But in 2023, Dominion said energy demand from data centers could quadruple by 2038 in Virginia, a state considered “data center alley,” and now it does not plan to retire any of its coal plants until at least 2045, when state law requires it.

Other factors extending coal plant lifespans are building electrification, industrial growth and increased electric vehicle ownership, the report says, but those are all overshadowed by the technology sector’s investments in data center buildout over the next four years.

“As the world’s largest tech companies raced to outdo each other, a wave of delayed coal plant retirements followed,” the analysis says.

For example, on Jan. 31, Southern Company announced plans to delay the retirements of generators at two of the largest coal plants in the country, both in Georgia, including two units at a plant outside Euharlee and one in Juliette that had been scheduled to retire between 2028 and 2035 and now will stay online to between 2035 and 2039, at least seven years past its initial retirement date.

Other plants the analysis identified as delaying retirement are in Wisconsin, Wyoming, Maryland, Indiana, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina.

Fassler, the report’s author, says the Trump administration’s claims that AI energy demand is a rationale for bringing back coal is undermined by the administration’s moves to cancel $8 billion in funding for new renewable energy and hollow out offices that handle renewables. Officials are “cancelling projects that would add capacity as we speak.”

While there is a projected surge in energy demand that “is real, after years of flat demand . . . the Trump administration seems to be making the problem worse by taking projects offline that would help, and if demand is as high as projected, we’ll need every megawatt of energy we can get.”

Further, coal is “not as efficient” an energy source as other types, and it is a poor fit for data centers in particular, Fassler says. “We want every watt as efficient as it can be.”

An earlier DeSmog report argued the U.S. doesn’t need fossil fuels to compete with China over AI, finding a concerted push by the administration and the energy and tech industries against renewables to fuel AI.

The findings in the report mark a significant change from a decade ago, when the U.S. appeared to be on track to phase out coal by 2030, thanks in part to Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, according to a Dec. 1 report in Canary Media. But now, “Trump and AI are delaying -- but not stopping -- the fuel’s decline.”

In 2015, report author Michael Grunwald profiled the Beyond Coal campaign’s efforts to help retire a third of the nation’s coal fleet in five years. “Now, a decade later, President Donald Trump has declared war on the war on coal,” he writes. “So, it seems like a good time to see how things are going on the battlefield. The short summary is that Beyond Coal is still winning, and America is continuing to reduce its reliance on the black stuff. But Trump and the artificial-intelligence boom are complicating the war on coal’s endgame.”

He adds that as power prices rise faster than inflation, “the affordability case for wind and solar has never been stronger, especially since the batteries that can store that clean energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining have never been cheaper.”

But Beyond Coal attorney Kristin Henry told Grunwald she is no longer sure final victory is imminent “because proving that coal no longer makes sense is easier than making it go away. Sure, it’s a dinosaur, but dinosaurs walked the earth for millions of years.” -- Dawn Reeves (dreeves@iwpnews.com)

https://insideepa.com/climate-extra-share/253179

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