 
|
Signature Sponsor
November 8, 2026 - A coal plant in northwest Colorado has limped along — generating power for only about three weeks so far this year — after President Donald Trump’s administration issued emergency orders for it to remain open past its planned retirement. Craig Unit 1 — one of three coal plants in Craig — was scheduled to shutter on Jan. 1, nearly a half century after it first began generating power in 1980. But on the eve of the plant’s planned closure, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued an emergency order to keep the coal plant operational.
Since Trump began his second term, his administration has issued multiple orders to keep Craig Unit 1 — as well as six other coal plants across the country — open despite planned closures. The orders have cited a nationwide energy emergency, including rising demand from AI data centers and “growing resource adequacy concerns.”
“Prematurely shuttering coal plants raises electricity prices and can threaten grid reliability,” said Emily Matthews, a deputy press secretary for the Department of Energy, in an email responding to questions about Craig Unit 1. She claimed the orders to keep coal plants operational have “prevented blackouts and saved lives.”
Because the Craig Unit 1 was broken down at the time it was supposed to be retired, it has cost the coal plant’s five co-owners — Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Platte River Power Authority, Salt River Project, PacifiCorp and Xcel Energy — millions of dollars to comply with the orders to get the plant back online, and keep it running.
Tri-State and the Platte River Power Authority have challenged the Trump administration’s order in court, raising concerns that utilities will have to pass the costs of keeping the plant operational along to customers. The Colorado Attorney General’s Office and environmental groups including Sierra Club and Earthjustice have also challenged the order in court.
“We had planned with the other owners of Craig Unit 1 to retire the plant at the end of 2025. That remains the position we wanted to do and still want to do” said Mark Stutz, a public relations specialist for Tri-State, which is the lead owner of the coal plant. “Tri-State does not have resource adequacy issues related to Craig 1 and it is still our contention it should have been retired at the end of 2025.”
Sierra Club staff attorney Greg Wannier said there’s no evidence to support that orders to keep coal plants online have prevented blackouts. Plans had been in place to retire Craig Unit 1 and replace its capacity with renewable energy sources for a decade — and everything was going smoothly until the Trump administration’s order, he said.
At the same time the Trump administration has claimed there’s an energy shortage, it has blocked wind and solar projects across the country, including in Colorado, Wannier said. He noted that coal plants are not only “dirty” — contributing to air pollution that impacts human health and warms the climate — but the aging plants are often expensive to run, especially as renewable resources have become cheaper.
“This is the thing: Plants have a shelf life,” Wannier said. “The plants that are being forced to keep operating are plants that have lived past their realistic ability to provide reliable power to the grid. That’s why they’re being shut down.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ office responded to the coal plant orders by noting that the state “does not have an energy emergency.” His office in a news release pointed to a North American Electric Reliability Corporation report that found no short-term or long-term elevated reliability risks in the Rocky Mountain region.
Earthjustice senior attorney Leslie Coleman said the Trump administration’s efforts to prop up coal plants is likely to have direct impacts on energy costs.
“These illegal orders are going to impose unnecessary costs on utility consumers, and we think that’s unconscionable at a time when electricity rates are already going up and customers are experiencing higher utility bills — because there’s no reason to keep that plant online,” Coleman said.
Meanwhile, public data from the Department of Energy shows that Craig 1 has only operated at about 3% of its capacity so far this year, producing small amounts of power for just a week or two at a time. During the short periods where it was generating power, the coal plant also appears to have tripped emergency protocols when it suddenly shut off.
Eric Frankowski, the executive director of the Western Clean Energy Campaign, said the data contradicts the Trump administration’s reason for keeping the coal plant open.
“It was a complete fabrication,” Frankowski said. “There was no emergency.”
Craig Unit 1 is ‘unreliable’
Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, has issued what are known as 202(c) orders to keep Craig Unit 1 and six other coal plants in Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Washington operational.
Under federal law, these temporary 90-day orders allow the Department of Energy to compel energy generation facilities to be available “during the continuance of a war” or an emergency that results in a “sudden increase in the demand” for energy. The order for Craig Unit 1 has been renewed three times, most recently on Sept. 25, citing projections that demand is expected to increase by 8.5% in the next decade.
“202(c) emergency authority is intended to be a last-ditch, extremely short-term authority that enables DOE to prevent a catastrophe that comes due to some unexpected storm or whatever,” Wannier said. “When DOE comes in and interferes with the resource planning decisions of utilities and state regulators and regional grid operators, it’s actually undermining the ability of those entities to manage the grid in a safe and responsible way.”
Craig Unit 1 is part of a three power plant system in Craig. Plans are in place for both Craig Unit 2 and Unit 3 to wind down operations and close by 2028.
Since the emergency order was issued, Frankowski said that Craig Unit 1 has barely operated. Federal data shows Unit 1 only produced power during two of the first eight months of the year. During that time, he noted that Units 2 and 3 both generated more than ten times as much power, while operating at less than 40% capacity.
Craig Unit 1 has been called upon three times in the past year for a total of two to three weeks, according to Stutz, the Tri-State spokesperson. Federal data show it generated 56,782 megawatts of energy in April and 20,478 megawatts during July for a total of 77,260 megawatts so far this year.
Even during the height of the summer, which was the hottest on record in Colorado, Frankowski noted that Unit 1 only provided power for a short period in July — and wasn’t generating power at all in August.
“If there was an emergency, the plant would be running full steam, right?” he said.
Southwest Power Pool, the regional transmission organization that determines how much energy needs to be generated and transferred between the multi-state region it covers, said in a statement that it “does not attribute reliability outcomes to any single power plant.”
“Which resources are utilized depends on many factors including availability, seasonal weather, how much electricity customers are using, unexpected plant outages and other conditions on the grid,” said Southwest Power Pool spokesperson Jennelle Primm.
The regional transmission organization’s planning and operations are “fuel-neutral” with all registered resources important to managing the grid, Primm said.
“When available, Craig 1 is considered like any other resource,” she said. “Whether a plant is producing power at a given time depends on whether it’s available, the prices and operating details its owner submitted, and conditions on the grid.
Rather than preventing blackouts, Wannier said Craig Unit 1 appears to be adding instability to the system.
On July 20, a coal plant “tripped offline” — or shutdown due to an issue — leading the Southwest Power Pool to activate an energy emergency alert and deploying contingency reserves, according to a report from the transmission organization. Wannier said that hourly emissions data shows that Craig Unit 1 was the source of this.
“In our view, that just illustrates why it makes no sense to order Craig 1, which is an extremely unreliable source, to continue operating,” he said. “In fact, it’s creating some of the reliability problems that the department claims it’s trying to solve.”
Cost to consumers
While the exact cost of continuing to operate Craig Unit 1 is unclear, one report commissioned by the Sierra Club estimated that it costs at least $80 million annually to keep it operational.
Because Craig Unit 1 is jointly-owned by five entities and has ongoing operating costs, Stutz said it’s not possible to provide an exact breakdown of what it has cost to keep the plant online.
But he said Tri-State — a not-for-profit power co-op that provides energy to utilities in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming — is “concerned about the ultimate cost to our members.”
Tri-State’s court challenge to the Department of Energy’s order aims to make the federal government pay for the cost of operating the plant, but the litigation is ongoing. Xcel Energy, a public utility company and Colorado’s largest energy provider, has intervened in the case, though it is not directly suing over the order.
“As a co-owner of the unit, Xcel Energy sought to intervene in this appeal to preserve our legal rights because decisions tied to the unit could have potential impacts on our customers and company,” said Xcel Energy spokesperson Lisa Andersen.
Andersen said that the Colorado Public Utilities Commission has approved Xcel Energy’s request to recover costs associated with keeping the Craig Unit 1 plant operating. Legal filings show that Xcel Energy, which owns about 10% of Craig Unit 1, has spent at least $4 million to keep the plant operational.
‘A road bump’
On Sept. 11, a Washington, D.C., appeals court unanimously ruled against the Department of Energy, overturning its order that required the the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan to stay open.
Despite the court decision, the Trump administration has continued to renew emergency orders for other coal plants, including Craig Unit 1. The case involving the Colorado coal plant is on hold while the Trump administration appeals the Michigan plant ruling.
In the end, Frankowski said he believes that coal generated power is on its way out in Colorado and the U.S. — and the Trump administration’s efforts to prop it up will ultimately fail as the cost of wind and solar energy continues to drop.
“I think this is a road bump in Colorado’s transition to a decarbonized energy system,” he said. “It’s a very costly annoyance is what it is. But it’s not slowing things down. As soon as the owners of Craig get a court decision, they’re going to shut down Craig 1, and then Craig 2 and Craig 3 will shut down in the next two years. Colorado very, very likely will be coal free by 2030.”
|
|