A new report finds nearly half of U.S. coal plants benefit from federal handouts and pollution exemptions, harming public health, our wallets, and the climate.
The Trump administration loves coal plants. The rest of us are paying the price in higher electricity bills, poorer health, and worsening climate change.
That’s the takeaway of an analysis out today from the Environmental Defense Fund. It finds the Trump administration is directly or indirectly propping up nearly half the U.S. coal fleet with taxpayer-funded handouts, Clean Air Act exemptions, and emergency orders forcing retiring units to keep running.
These actions represent a thumb on the scale for the country’s least cost-effective and most heavily polluting source of electricity. They also serve as a promise kept: As EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told coal and mining executives this summer, “Many of the items that were on your wish list are now done.”
“This is a lot of government support and intervention that’s going to benefit an industry much more than it will benefit the American public,” said Surbhi Sarang, EDF’s senior attorney for clean power. “[Coal plants] produce pollution, which will just cost communities more. And they’re an expensive form of energy that will cost communities more.”
EDF’s analysis covers 184 U.S. coal plants that are operating and connected to the grid. Of those, 90 have been “propped up” in one way or another by the administration.
Seventy coal plants have received exemptions from limits on toxic pollution set by the Biden administration under the Clean Air Act.
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