January 30, 2026
WRA Mini Pod: Trump Administration Forces Colorado Coal Power Plant to Stay Open
How a False ‘Energy Emergency’ Forcing Coal Plants to Keep Running Hurts The West.
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Just two days before the new year residents of Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming woke up to an unpleasant surprise.
The Craig One power station in Northwest Colorado had been forced to remain open by the Trump administration. The Administration used an unusual and legally shaky 202c order to force the plant to stay open. It was the latest in a series of similar orders forcing old, dirty, and often unreliable coal power plants to stay on the grid.
Not only do coal power plants worsen air pollution in the West – where many major cities already often have some of the worst air quality in the country – but it also is expensive and contributes to rising electricity costs in the West.
We'll now bear the burden of keeping an unneeded coal plant open, one that pollutes the air we breathe and runs on expensive, dirty fuel that the energy industry has been steadily moving away from for years.
Everyone in the West deserves clean air. Coal power is old, dated, expensive, and often unreliable. The future of the West means relying on clean energy like affordable wind and solar. The administration’s effort to keep obsolete coal plants online is a threat to our clean air, health, and affordable energy bills.
On this episode of Two Degrees Out West, we talk about the 202c order to keep the Craig One power plant open and what this unprecedented move by the Trump administration means for the West.
As the Clean Energy Director, Erin Overturf operates throughout the organization’s seven-state region to develop strategic objectives related to decarbonizing the electricity sector and utilizing clean electricity to fuel other end-uses that have traditionally been powered by fossil fuels. Erin and her 26-person team represent WRA in utility regulatory proceedings, air quality proceedings, negotiations, and civil litigation.
Learn more about her work here.
[00:00:00] Dave Papineau (Host): Just two days before the New year residents of Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico and Wyoming woke up to an unpleasant surprise. The Craig Power Station in northwest Colorado had been forced to remain open by the Trump administration. It’s the latest in a series of similar orders, forcing old, dirty, and often unreliable coal power plants to stay on the grid.
[00:00:21] Not only do coal power plants worsen air pollution in the West, where many major cities already have some of the worst air quality in the country. But it’s also expensive and contributes to rising electricity costs in the West. On this episode of Two Degrees Out West, we talk about the 2 0 2 C order to keep Craig one power plant open.
[00:00:38] And what this unprecedented move by the Trump administration means for the West. Welcome to Two Degrees Out West, a podcast for advocates and decision makers seeking solutions to climate change and its impacts around the West on two degrees out west. We talk with our climate experts and advocates to bring you the stories, experiences, and insights from their work in the places that we call home on this episode.
[00:01:01] Why a false energy emergency forcing coal plants to keep running hurts us all.
[00:01:06] Erin Overturf: My Name is Erin Overturf, and I’m the Clean Energy Director at WRA.
[00:01:11] Dave Papineau (Host): She spends her time advocating for sensible policies that keep our air clean and reduce climate pollution. She says, this order was sudden and unprecedented.
[00:01:19] Erin Overturf: So just two days before the new year, the Trump administration issued an order forcing the coal-fired Craig one power plant to stay online. Craig one is a 427 megawatt, nearly half century old coal plant located in Northwestern Colorado. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, which is the operator and partial owner of the plant, had been set to shut it down at the end of 2025, but instead, utility customers, including many rural communities.
[00:01:50] We’ll now bear the burden of keeping an unneeded coal plant open, one that pollutes the air we breathe and runs on expensive, dirty fuel that the energy industry has been steadily moving away from for years.
[00:02:02] Dave Papineau (Host): Aaron says, the Craig one power plant serves a large area throughout the west, and this decision impacts people throughout several of our states.
[00:02:09] Erin Overturf: So Craig one is located in Craig, Colorado in the northwestern part of the state. It’s operated by Tri-State, but it’s actually co-owned by Tri-State and a number of other Western utilities, including the Platte River Power Authority. The Salt River Project, Pacific Corp, and Xcel Energy. So all of those utilities really across the west will be experiencing the impacts of Craig One’s continued operation.
[00:02:36] Dave Papineau (Host): Aaron says, justification for this order is shaky at best.
[00:02:41] Erin Overturf: Well, so the US Department of Energy issued an order forcing Craig one to stay online, and it relies on a legally dubious interpretation of Section 2 0 2 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.
[00:03:01] The legally unsound rationale behind the doe’s use of the 2 0 2 C orders is that an energy emergency exists and these coal plants are needed to address and maintain a reliable grid. That’s just simply not true.
[00:03:15] Dave Papineau (Host): The order also interrupts years of process that the utility has gone through to make sure that closing Craig one was the right choice for Colorado rate payers.
[00:03:22] She said alongside affordability, maintaining
[00:03:25] clean
[00:03:25] air for Colorado was a key factor in the decision to close the plan. This order from the Department of Energy didn’t seem to consider the years of planning that went into closing Craig one, nor the economic consequences on rate payers.
[00:03:39] Erin Overturf: State and other stakeholders have been preparing for the retirement of Craig one since 2016.
[00:03:44] So Tri-State and the other plant owners decided to retire Craig one, for economic reasons and to ensure that Colorado’s in compliance with Federal regional Haze standards. If you’re not familiar with them, regional haze regulations exist to protect both air quality and visibility in our iconic Western lands like Rocky Mountain National Park and wilderness areas.
[00:04:07] So Tri-state’s been planning for the unit’s retirement for almost a decade, including by acquiring adequate replacement resources to maintain system reliability. In fact, in 2025 after a years long litigated resource planning process, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission determines that Craig one is not required for reliability or resource adequacy purposes, and found that Tri-State had convincingly concluded that its electric system will meet all relevant reliability metrics without the unit’s operation.
[00:04:40] Dave Papineau (Host): Erin said, this move is going to be expensive for Colorado and the surrounding states.
[00:04:45] Erin Overturf: A recent analysis calculated that the added fuel operations and maintenance costs of forcing Craig Unit one to keep operating will run as high as $20.9 million every 90 days, or $84.7 million a year. Notably Craig one has been out of service since December 19th, 2025 due to a mechanical failure of a valve.
[00:05:11] So this means that right out of the gate, tri-state, and its rural customers will be incurring otherwise unnecessary costs as the utility works to repair the coal unit before it can even come back online. We’ve already seen that similar 2 0 2 C orders are imposing significant costs on utility customers in other states where they’ve already been issued.
[00:05:33] So a similar order was issued for the plant in Michigan earlier in 2025 and in the five months after the order was issued. Utility incurred $80 million in related net expenses. A staggering $615,000 a day in additional costs for its customers. And those are just the financial costs. We also know that continued reliance on coal will mean more air and water pollution, more climate warming emissions, and the generation of more coal ash waste.
[00:06:07] Dave Papineau (Host): Aaron says this move is triggering lawsuits from many different environmental organizations.
[00:06:12] Erin Overturf: We’ve never seen the Federal Power Acts, emergency powers used in this way. The decision to close Craig one was made through a collaborative regulatory process to comply with federal air quality regulations.
[00:06:26] The impacts of Craig One’s 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 frankly, legally flimsy 2 0 2 C orders strips, this kind of on the ground collaborative decision making away from states.
[00:06:51] It’s really a direct affront to state sovereignty.
[00:06:55] Dave Papineau (Host): Erin says, several environmental groups have taken action.
[00:06:59] Erin Overturf: A number of conservation organizations are suing the Trump administration and saying that this order is illegal. So we’ll be watching the courts to see what happens next for Craig one.
[00:07:11] Dave Papineau (Host): At the moment, it’s unclear how Craig one will operate since it’s actually been offline since December 19th.
[00:07:16] Due to a mechanical failure, everyone in the West deserves clean air. Coal power is old. Dated, expensive and often unreliable. The future of the West means we’re relying on clean energy, like affordable wind and solar. The administration’s effort to keep this obsolete coal plant online is a threat to our clean air health and affordable energy bills.
[00:07:36] At the action link in our show notes, you can write your electric officials today to tell them to kick coal and move forward into a clean energy future for the west. Again, that’s linked in the show notes. If you’d like to stay up to date with these issues, sign up for our email list. We’ll be sharing news around this 2 0 2 C order with our advocates.
[00:07:55] The time is now. The West cannot wait for clean air. Lastly, we’d like to thank our sponsors who enable our work in the West. Our Champion sponsor is First Bank. Our signature sponsors are Denver Water Torch, clean Energy, Scarpa, goco, and Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. Our supporting sponsors are BSW Wealth Partners, Meridian Public Affairs Group 14, engineering and Kind Design.
[00:08:21] Thank you for listening.
Please consider leaving a review after listening so more people can find our podcast. Also, please check out the further reading list below to check out all of the articles and resources that we mention throughout the episode.
2 Degrees Out West is a podcast from Western Resource Advocates, a regional non-profit organization fighting climate change and its impacts to support the environment, economy, and people of the West. WRA works across seven states to protect our climate, land, air, and water.
2 Degrees out West is a podcast for advocates and decision makers who want to fight climate change and its impacts across the West.
On 2 Degrees Out West, we talk with climate experts and advocates to bring you stories, experiences, and insights from their work in the places we call home.
WRA Mini Pods are quicker, educational shorts to keep you in the loop on key issues in the West. We want to bring you information in a digestible format about the most relevant issues we’re dealing with.
It is hosted by Dave Papineau.
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