According to the article, "The Trump administration just ordered another retiring coal plant to stay open. It could cost ratepayers millions", the Trump administration’s Department of Energy recently ordered an aging coal-fired power plant in Colorado to stay open, just a day before it was set to be retired.

The Order

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 in the last 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.

Colorado’s Response

Colorado’s governor and its top energy official pushed back on Wright’s claim that keeping Craig open would boost affordability, saying it would only raise electricity prices.

In a statement, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, said the order would pass “tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed.”

According to Polis’ statement, Craig 1 “isn’t even operational right now” and would require repairs costing millions of dollars to get it up and running before it could even produce power. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the power supply co-op that owns Craig 1, said the unit has been offline since a critical part broke on December 19.

“As a not-for-profit cooperative, our membership will bear the costs of compliance with this order unless we can identify a method to share costs with those in the region,” said Tri-State CEO Duane Highley.

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 the media.

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

Coal for Ideological Reasons?

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.

Michigan’s Experience

Consumers Energy, the utility running a retiring Michigan coal plant that Wright forced to stay open in June, recently reported that it cost $80 million to keep the plant open from late May to late September — largely from the purchase of additional coal — which will raise residential electricity bills in Michigan and 10 other states the plant serves.

Environmental groups are challenging the other orders from Wright in the courts.

Discussion Questions

  1. Describe the mission, powers, and responsibilities of the U.S. Department of Energy.

    The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is a federal executive department. The DOE’s mission is to “(e)nsure America’s security and prosperity by addressing energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.” This involves securing reliable, affordable, and clean energy; maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile; advancing scientific discovery and innovation; and addressing environmental cleanup from past nuclear activities. 

    The DOE’s powers come from federal statutes passed by Congress (e.g., the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977). These include regulatory and administrative powers (e.g., establishing and enforcing energy efficiency standards for appliances and buildings); funding and grant authority (e.g., extending grants for grid modernization); and nuclear authority (e.g., overseeing nuclear weapons research, development, and maintenance). 

    The DOE’s responsibilities include energy policy (e.g., supporting fossil energy research); national security (e.g., preventing nuclear proliferation and terrorism); scientific research (e.g., operating 17 national laboratories); environmental cleanup (e.g., cleaning up radioactive and hazardous waste from Cold War-era nuclear weapons production; and data gathering, analysis, and forecasting (e.g., collecting and publishing U.S. energy data through the Energy Information Administration).

  2. In your reasoned opinion, should the Department of Energy defer to Colorado’s and the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s decision to close Craig 1? Why or why not?

    This is an opinion question, so student responses may vary. 

    In your author’s opinion, the Department of Energy should defer to Colorado’s and the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s decision to close Craig 1, particularly considering the tremendous costs associated with making Craig 1 operational again, the fact that Tri-State has already built gas and renewables projects to replace the power the unit produced    , and the fact that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has not forecast any reliability risks in the region associated with the transition. 

    If the facility is not needed to bolster Colorado’s electrical grid, it seems wasteful to make Craig 1 operational again, particularly given that it would be, at its best, redundant.

  3. Describe Michigan’s experience with keeping a set-to-be-retired coal plant open.

    As indicated in the article, keeping other coal plants open past their retirement dates has foisted tens of millions of additional costs on ratepayers. For example, Consumers Energy, the utility running a retiring Michigan coal plant that Energy Secretary Chris Wright forced to stay open in June, recently reported that it cost $80 million to keep the plant open from late May 2025 to late September 2025,  largely from the purchase of additional coal, which will raise residential electricity bills in Michigan and 10 other states the plant serves.