Climate Fix Blog

Two days before the new year, residents of Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming woke to an unpleasant surprise. Craig Unit 1, a coal plant nearly a half-century old in northwestern Colorado, has been forced to remain open by the Trump administration.  

The 427-megawatt Craig 1, primarily owned and operated by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, was set to shut down at the end of 2025. Instead, utility customers, including many rural communities, will now bear the burden of keeping an unneeded coal plant open — one that pollutes the air we breathe and runs on an expensive, dirty fuel source the energy industry has steadily moved away from for years.  

Conservation organizations like Western Resource Advocates feared Craig 1 would be the next coal plant forced by the Trump administration to operate beyond its approved retirement date. The U.S. Department of Energy’s order forcing Craig 1 to stay online relies on a legally dubious interpretation of section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. Similar orders have been used to force five other coal plants across the nation to remain in operation past their planned retirement dates.  

These orders often ignore years of work done by state regulators, conservation groups, community advocates, and utilities to close coal plants on specific timelines. The decision to retire Craig 1 was reached in 2016 for economic reasons and to ensure Colorado’s compliance with federal air quality standards after it was determined that emissions from the unit were contributing to air quality violations in Rocky Mountain National Park, other public lands, and wilderness areas. Since 2016, Tri-State has been planning for the unit’s retirement, including by acquiring adequate replacement resources to maintain system reliability. 

What’s Behind These Federal Orders? #

The legally unsound rationale behind the DOE’s use of 202(c) orders is that an energy emergency exists, and these coal plants are needed to address and maintain a reliable grid. This is unequivocally not true with Craig 1.  In 2025, after a yearlong litigated resource planning proceeding, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission determined Craig 1 “is not required for reliability or resource adequacy purposes,” and found Tri-State “convincingly concludes” that its electric system will meet all relevant reliability metrics without the unit’s operation. Tri-State planned for the retirement of Craig 1 in each portfolio it modeled, and concluded that in every portfolio presented it would have excess capacity on its electric system through 2030. And a recent analysis calculated that the added fuel, operations, and maintenance costs of forcing Craig Unit 1 to keep operating will run as high as $20.9 million every 90 days, or $84.7 million a year. To justify its reliance on 202(c), the DOE points to two executive orders issued by President Trump:  

• The Jan. 20, 2025, declaration of a so-called “energy emergency” 

• A subsequent order issued April 8, 2025, that pointed to an “unprecedented surge in electricity demand” due largely to the explosion of data centers to power the use of AI.   

It’s clear that the surge of data center development across the West poses a legitimate challenge for utilities to keep up with rising demand. In 2025, WRA published a report showing the collective annual energy demands of the utilities in our region are projected to be 32% higher in 2030, and 55% higher in 2035. Tri-State even took the initiative to develop and file a large load tariff to address the surge in demand from large load developments, like data centers, with the Federal Energy Regulation Commission. But in October 2025, FERC blocked Tri-State’s proposed tariff from taking effect.  To address the demand of data centers and shield other energy consumers from excessive price increases, WRA outlined a series of recommendations that utilities, regulators, elected leaders, and policymakers can adopt to advance clean energy, protect electricity customers, and minimize and mitigate impacts on water resources.  One of the worst ways to meet this demand is by burning coal.   

Coal’s Dirty, Deadly, Expensive Cost#

Federal orders to keep these expensive and obsolete plants running defy both the best science on the harmful effects of burning coal and market trends that show skyrocketing prices for the dirty fuel. Coal plant owners spent $6.2 billion more in 2024 than they would have spent for the same amount of electricity generated by coal in 2021 — a 28% jump in just three years. And these costs are often passed on to everyday ratepayers.  The Trump administration’s “energy crisis” is a manufactured emergency, designed to keep costly and polluting coal plants online.  The longer utilities burn coal, whether by their own volition or by federal fiat, the more ratepayers already struggling under the burden of rising rates will suffer.  We can look at the economic havoc 202(c) orders have wreaked on other states. In the five months after Consumers Energy was forced to keep its J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan open, it incurred $80 million in related net expenses — a staggering $615,000 a day in additional costs for its customers. 

Erasing Expert State, Utility Decision Making#

When the DOE misuses 202(c) authority in this way, state regulators and utilities lose the ability to make the best decisions for ratepayers and the environment.  The decision to close Craig 1 was made through a collaborative regulatory process to comply with federal air quality regulations. The impacts of the Craig 1 closure, including the acquisition of sufficient replacement resources, was vetted by stakeholders and regulators in a robust litigated process at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. The Trump administration’s use of legally flimsy 202(c) orders strips this kind of on-the-ground, collaborative decision making away, in a direct affront to state sovereignty. We simply don’t know how Craig Unit 1 will operate — if it will run 24/7 or intermittently. Most notably, the resource has been out of service since Dec. 19 due to a mechanical failure of a valve. This means Tri-State ratepayers will need to pay otherwise unnecessary costs as the utility works to repair the coal unit before it can even be put back into use. We all deserve clean air and affordable electricity service. The Trump administration’s efforts to keep this obsolete coal plant running put both in danger. 

Tell your elected officials – it’s time to kick coal to the curb and move forward into a clean energy future. #

Take Action Now! #