By Avi Salzman
President Donald Trump's plan to revive the coal industry is facing pushback from lawmakers and utilities who say that old coal plants are inefficient and costing taxpayers money.
It used to be that coal's biggest opponents were environmentalists who raised alarms about the soot they spew. Coal's environmental and health impacts are still a concern, but opponents are increasingly shining a spotlight on the cost of keeping decrepit coal power plants around. Older plants can be expensive to operate, and the bill is often paid by ratepayers, whose costs are already rising. At least five coal plants that had been expected to close -- often to be replaced by more modern natural gas plants -- were forced to stay open under Trump administration orders. Trump says that coal is reliable and "clean," and he's criticized decisions by past presidents to allow old plants to close.
Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, a utility that operates in several states, sent a letter to the Department of Energy raising concerns about the department's order for CenterPoint to keep open an old Indiana coal plant that had been slated for closure. The plant, known as FB Culley, was regularly offline over the winter, producing no power for residents, CenterPoint wrote in the February letter. From Dec. 23 -- the day the department ordered the plant to remain open -- through Feb. 8, the plant wasn't operating on 26 days because of equipment issues, and had limited operations on 17 other days because of maintenance issues, the letter said. The plant has the capacity to produce 103.7 megawatts of power, but was frequently producing much less.
The plant even broke down on Jan. 26, during Winter Storm Fern -- an "emergency" period when the Trump administration said that all available power plants needed to be ready to provide electricity. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has said that coal plants were the backbone of the electricity grid during that storm. "Winter Storm Fern that hit 22 states across the eastern half of our country in late January would have caused significant blackouts and likely led to hundreds of American deaths if we had not kept those 17 gigawatts of coal power on the grid," he said last month at a conference in Houston.
CenterPoint wrote that keeping the plant open "will require substantial investment to support an inefficient and increasingly unreliable asset, rather than advancing affordable and reliable service for customers in southwestern Indiana." CenterPoint asked the department to not extend the order when it came up for renewal in March, but the department did so anyway. The letter from CenterPoint was obtained and released by Citizens Action Coalition, a consumer advocacy organization in Indiana. "This letter shows that even utilities like CenterPoint admit that there is no grid emergency and that coal plants are too unreliable, expensive, and polluting to continue operating," said Ben Inskeep, the coalition's program director.
But the Department of Energy said that the Culley plant was an important contributor during the storm. "The reliable supply of power from this coal plant was essential in powering the grid during recent extreme winter weather," a department representative wrote in response to questions. "From Jan. 23 -- Feb. 1, Culley operated at approximately 30 megawatts almost every day."
It isn't just utilities that are raising concerns. Lawmakers are also pushing back on the administration's orders. On Wednesday, Rep. Frank Mrvan, a Democrat from Indiana, asked Wright why his district's residents should be paying for the cost of a coal plant in the city of Wheatfield that was supposed to be closed at the end of 2025 but was also ordered to stay open. Mrvan cited one estimate that it would cost more than $100 million to keep the plant running, and the cost would have to be paid by local residents and businesses. "Please explain why that forced emergency order is benefiting the people who are getting crushed by those policies," Mrvan asked Wright.
"If we don't add additional power, the risk of blackouts is very high" in the electric grid region that includes Mrvan's district, Wright responded. But Wright said he would consider Mrvan's concerns, and potentially reverse the order if it isn't net beneficial to the people in the region. The department said Wright will be engaging with Mrvan's office.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
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April 20, 2026 15:32 ET (19:32 GMT)
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