Retirementchanges

Coal plants make operational decisions about when to retire years in advance to allow sufficient time for planning replacement capacity. Plants across the country are now continuing to operate past their scheduled retirement dates and pushing back their retirement dates. Only 2.6 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity shuttered in 2025, the lowest amount in the past 15 years, according to an April report from the U.S. Energy Information administration.

While many of these extensions in retirement dates cannot be attributed to specific policy decisions (and may in some cases be due to market forces), the Trump administration actions described in this webpage were specifically requested by the coal industry to provide support for existing coal plants.

The Trump administration has also directly attacked state and local plans to rely on coal plant retirements to reduce harmful soot and smog-forming pollution under the Regional Haze program, a Clean Air Act provision that calls on states to develop plans to lower pollution that could contribute to haze at U.S. National Parks and protected lands. The Trump administration has disapproved Colorado’s plans under this program, ignoring the state’s carefully crafted decisions to reduce haze pollution by retiring no longer needed coal plants and pursuing more affordable and cleaner sources of replacement power.