February 16, 2026 - America’s power supply is stretched to the breaking point. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC), the nation’s grid reliability watchdog, recently found that more than half the nation now faces a high risk of blackouts over the next five years. It’s a remarkable warning. It should also be a clear call to action.

One of NERC’s key findings in its latest long-term reliability assessment is that the nation continues to lose well-operating power plants, namely coal power plants, at an unsustainable rate. It’s a challenge now compounded by a surge in power demand from new manufacturing, electric vehicles, and the rapid addition of enormous data centers, as well as the power needs of large cities.

NERC expects the nation’s peak winter power demand to jump by 245 gigawatts in just the next decade. That level of new demand is equivalent to adding the power needs of 150 million new homes to the grid. The strain on our already overtaxed power supply is significant.

If the United States is to address the grid reliability crisis now at our doorstep, there’s no doing so without the coal fleet. That reality was underscored by Winter Storm Fern and the brutal cold that followed. Fern dropped snow and ice from Texas to Maine, pushing power supplies on one regional grid after another to their limit. While grid operators have nimbly navigated surging power demand with a series of emergency orders from the Department of Energy, there was no way to keep the lights and heat on without coal.

Time and again, when bitter cold grips the nation, it’s coal generation that surges to power when other sources of electricity falter. Exactly that happened with Fern.

According to the Energy Information Administration, in the week that ended January 25, as Fern began its march across the country, coal generation increased 31 percent from the previous week. It had to be, as a generation from hydro, wind and solar power all declined. Natural gas prices also soared. Coal plants’ ability to ramp up also played a critical role in shielding consumers from price spikes.

For years, U.S. coal policy was defined by an effort to close power plants and mines. That effort has fortunately come to an abrupt end, and not a minute too soon.

The era of dismissing reliability warnings from grid operators and reliability regulators created the crisis we face today. While efforts to build power sources and infrastructure to meet surging electricity demand are important, recognizing the value of the existing coal fleet is equally important.

These power plants remain the foundation of our grid, and we can, and should, get far more power from them.

Coal plant capacity factors, a measure of plant utilization, jumped from 42 percent in 2024 to 50 percent in 2025. While a step in the right direction, the coal fleet can operate more frequently. In fact, these power plants were designed to do so.

With power demand growing so rapidly, getting more out of the coal fleet is one of the few straightforward answers within reach. As coal plant utilization rises, the cost of power produced from each plant will fall. With electricity affordability a key concern for consumers and policymakers alike, that’s an important consideration.

The grid reliability and electricity affordability challenges facing the nation call for pragmatism. A firm recognition of the irreplaceable role filled by the nation’s coal fleet is exactly that.

Syd S. Peng is the Charles E. Lawall Chair of Mining Engineering emeritus in the Department of Mining Engineering at West Virginia University. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.