It’s happened in Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania, now Colorado.
Aging, obsolete, polluting and expensive – coal plants that markets have abandoned are being mandated to run by the “free market” whiz kids in Trump’s energy department.
Captive ratepayers money being siphoned to the pockets of coal baron donors and cronies.
The U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order late Tuesday to keep an aging Colorado coal plant open, just one day before it was slated to close.
The plant — Unit 1, part of Craig Station, in Moffat County — is now required to keep running until March 30, 2026. The order can also be extended.
The move drew a furious response from the governor’s office and environmental groups, who contest whether an emergency even exists that would require the plant to stay open.
Governor Polis said the order would lead to a huge spike in costs to repair the plant, which may be borne by customers of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a cooperative operating the plant to deliver electricity to rural communities in Nebraska, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado.
“This order will pass tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed,” Polis said in a statement.
“Ludicrously, the coal plant isn’t even operational right now, meaning repairs — to the tune of millions of dollars — just to get it running, all on the backs of rural Colorado ratepayers!”
CPR could not immediately confirm whether the plant is broken. Tri-State, which operates the plant but co-owns it with other utility companies, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright invoked Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to keep the plant open. The law allows the federal government to order power plants to stay open during emergencies — like during times of war, in the aftermath of disasters or when there’s a shortage of electricity.
But this year, the Trump administration has repeatedly used the law to keep the lights on at plants in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana and other states.
n its order, the DOE said Colorado is on the verge of facing a dire energy emergency, because of the retirement of power plants and a spike in electricity demand.
Losing Craig Unit 1 could lead to a “loss of power to homes, and businesses in the areas that may be affected by curtailments or power outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety,” according to the order.
The environmental group Earthjustice said in a statement that the order was illegal and the DOE’s claims are unsupported. It has already sued the Trump administration over other emergency orders to keep coal plants open.
“This unlawful order will benefit no one but the struggling coal industry,” said Michael Hiatt, deputy managing attorney with Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain Office. “We are prepared to take action to defend Colorado communities and ensure a just transition.”
Keeping coal plants open can be expensive, because it often disrupts years of planning by regulators and utility companies.
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In the video at the top of the page, Matt Randolph asserts that the Colorado Plant was fueled by coal mines that are scheduled to close, meaning this DOE mandate is causing chain reaction clusterfuck, disrupting planning and bringing uncertainty across multiple companies and communities.
In response to the prompt
“The department of energy has ordered Unit 1 at Craig Station coal plant to stay open despite plans to close it. Can you confirm if that plant is supplied by a nearby coal mine, and if so, is that mine still producing coal?”
Google Gemini says:
- Supplying Mines: The plant has historically been supplied by the Trapper Mine (on-site) and the Colowyo Mine (approximately 25 miles away).
- Current Production Status:
- Colowyo Mine: Has stopped coal production as of late 2025. Owners officially transitioned the site to full reclamation, with mass layoffs of the remaining 133 workers scheduled to take effect January 6, 2026.
- Trapper Mine: Historically the sole supplier for Units 1 and 2, this mine was also scheduled to close alongside the plant’s retirement. While some reports indicate it remains tied to the plant’s operational life, recent directives note that the plant’s units were being retired partly because their local supplying mines were also shuttering.
Local news reports seem to confirm.
The Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association plans to permanently close the Colowyo surface mine, located near Meeker, Colo. The company has signed a contract with Kiewit Mining Group Inc., for reclamation services beginning on or around Jan. 1, 2026. Tri-State’s subsidiary, the Colowyo Coal Co., filed a WARN notice with the State of Colorado, saying the mine’s 133 employees would be laid off by the end of the year.
Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction Colorado:
The timing remains unclear, but the end result appears to be certain for the Trapper Mine near Craig.
The coal mine, a supplier to the nearby Craig Station power generating plant, is expected to shut down as a result of the plant’s planned closure in the coming decade. The mine’s closure is expected somewhere between 2026 and 2030, its president says.
“That (plant) is our sole customer, so when the plant shuts down that will certainly end Trapper as we know it,” Michael Morriss said in an interview Tuesday.
In a case filed following the mandate to keep Michigan’s JH Campbell plant open last summer, a coalition of consumer and environmental groups pointed out that the aging plant’s history of outages and breakdowns belied the purported “reliability” argument for keeping it open. According to the filing, “all three units have experienced long and recurrent outages in recent
years that reflect aged, worn components that are expensive and may be difficult to repair or replace”
Lengthy outages have been recorded in recent years, several of them during the summer months when, purportedly, these plants would have been most needed.
That court filing included the following graph.
(For reference, there are 8,760 hours in a year.)
Have the same bullshit here in Oztralia.