this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026

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The Trump administration just ordered another retiring coal plant to stay open. It could cost ratepayers millions (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 month ago by NarrativeBear@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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The Trump administration ordered an aging coal-fired power plant in Colorado to stay open on Tuesday, a day before it was set to be retired.

The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright will keep the nearly 50-year-old Craig Generating Station Unit 1 in northwest Colorado operating until the end of March, with an option to extend it further.

It’s the Department of Energy’s sixth such move this year; Wright has also ordered two coal plants in Indiana, one in Michigan and one in Washington state to stay open past their retirement dates, as well as a Pennsylvania power plant that runs on oil.

“Keeping this coal plant online will ensure Americans maintain an affordable, reliable, and secure supply of electricity,” Wright said in a statement.

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[–] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

It would cost at least $20 million to keep Craig 1 operational for 90 days and approximately $85 million to run the unit for a year, according to a report from power sector consulting firm Grid Strategies, prepared for the Sierra Club. Those costs are mostly from the purchase of coal. However, the price tag could balloon to $150 million per year, depending on how much the DOE requires the plant to run, the Grid Strategies report said.

Colorado Energy Office executive director Will Toor said Tri-State has already built gas and renewables projects to replace the power the unit produced. Toor said the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has not forecast any reliability risks in the region.

In other words, Toor said, Craig 1 is simply not needed to bolster the state’s grid.

“We think there would be a very significant cost to ratepayers for no benefit,” Toor told CNN.

In addition, Toor said, Craig 1 was built near a coal seam that has had all of its coal mined. Procuring more coal from elsewhere would incur additional costs.

Wright’s order “is purely for the purpose of trying to keep coal in the system for ideological reasons, while driving up cost to customers,” Toor said. “At the same time, they are actually taking steps to reduce the reliability of the grid by making it far harder to deploy the resources that you can quickly build, which are wind and solar.”

Keeping other coal plants open past their retirement dates has foisted tens of millions of additional costs on ratepayers.

Anything to keep the AI pollution machines fed and operating while socializing the costs to tax payers against their wishes.

Are we winning yet?

[–] chisel@piefed.social 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The article clearly states that the plants aren't needed, not even to power AI. They're literally keeping them running purely to pollute and own the libs.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

I bet if you dig deeper you'll find a connection to the Trump family's wallet.

[–] green_red_black@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 month ago

The thing is the amount of Power the Data Center needs no Coal plant can provide.

Google alone is finding the need to invest in a private nuclear plant. And that is just for Gemini.