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Posted on 04/21/2026 9:58:23 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
Coal-fired power plant retirements in the United States dropped to their lowest level in more than a decade in 2025, as operators delayed or canceled closures and federal officials stepped in to keep some facilities running to support grid reliability, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
New data released Monday by EIA shows that the U.S. electric power sector retired 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity across four plants last year — the smallest annual total since 2010, and a figure below the 8.5 GW of retirements that had been planned at the start of the year.
Instead, companies postponed 4.8 GW of scheduled closures to future years and canceled plans to retire another 1.1 GW. Operators also scrapped plans to close 1.2 GW of capacity that had been slated for 2027 and pushed back the retirement of one facility from 2026 to 2029.
The slowdown continues a broader trend: coal plant retirements have declined significantly since 2022, when 13.7 GW — about 6.5 percent of the U.S. coal fleet at the time — was taken offline.
In 2025, the 2.6 GW retired represented 1.5 percent of total coal capacity at the end of 2024.
Six coal-fired units were shut down units in 2025:
| Plant | Unit | State | Retired | Capacity (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indian River Generating Station | 4 | Delaware | 02/25 | 410 |
| Cholla | 1 | Arizona | 03/25 | 383 |
| Cholla | 3 | Arizona | 03/25 | 383 |
| Intermountain Power Project | 1 | Utah | 10/25 | 1800 |
| Intermountain Power Project | 2 | Utah | 11/25 | 1800 |
| Prairie Creek | 1 | Iowa | 12/25 | 15 |
The largest closure, the Intermountain Power Project, was operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. Some of the lost capacity there was replaced by a new 1,017-MW natural gas plant that began operating at the same site in late 2025.
...operators at three additional coal plants — Brandon Shores in Maryland, South Oak in Wisconsin, and Comanche in Colorado — also postponed closures that had been planned for 2025, representing a combined 2.2 GW of capacity.
...the industry still plans to retire 6.4 GW of coal capacity this year, equal to nearly 4 percent of the coal fleet operating at the end of 2025. However, those plans remain uncertain and could shift depending on regulatory decisions and economic conditions.
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Is the nation finally coming to its senses with regard to our power supply? We should NEVER have led illiterate and innumerate idiots in politics dictate power policy. That was a horrific mistake. At least we are not as far gone as Europe is.
“Is the nation finally coming to its senses with regard to our power supply?“
24 states have run to the courts to block the relief that Trump gave the automakers from the insane regulations the rats put on them.
Why is the LA, California Water Department operating any Utah power plant?
1997 - House GOP accuses Clinton of using Utah to repay foreigners
If people in charge were using their heads & actually closely studying the situation beforehand, there need never have been any shutdown of conventional plants in the first place. I think we were at that time needing more power & a better grid system. Not that renewable energy doesn’t have it’s place; I believe it does, but in small setups not requiring 24 hr. a day reliable 60cycle AC power. Even in some small installations, it’s questionable as to whether or not it would be the way to go. In some setups batteries might be the best.
Weird, isn’t it? It’s called “outsiting” in the industry. The arrangement dates back to the plant’s construction in the 1980s when LADWP was the largest power purchaser and handled operations/maintenance via agreements. The IPP is owned by the Intermountain Power Agency (primarily 23 Utah municipalities/co-ops). LADWP has long served as the project manager and operating agent (running day-to-day operations), even though the plant is hundreds of miles outside LADWP’s California service territory.
Similar arrangements exist mainly in the Western U.S. Other joint projects include Palo Verde Nuclear in Arizona and Hoover Dam, where LADWP or other California munis have significant interests or allocations, though operation is often handled by others like Arizona Public Service or the Bureau of Reclamation.
Many municipal utilities and joint-action agencies participate in out-of-state generation for resource diversity, but the actual “operator” role (the entity running the plant) is usually assigned to one participant and is less common than simple ownership shares or power purchases.
It’s far less common these days. In the 80s and 90s, deregulation led to the rise of independent power producers (IPPs) and the creation of wholesale markets meant fewer traditional utilities directly operating large generation fleets at all.
You raise two BIG “ifs”:
1. If people in charge were using their heads
2. If people in charge actually closely studying the situation beforehand
The first requires a modicum of common sense, something not abundant in elected officials.
The second requires leaning on engineers to advise on economic and technical feasibility. The politicians don’t care about that. They suck up big “Greenie Bucks” from wacko enviros and then sell the gullible populace on the promise of unicorns and pixie dust. Then the rubes back home go “Yeah!! Green!! We don’t need any nukes or fossil fuels at all!”
Until the lights dim or go out.
I find it difficult to believe that with modern technology coal cannot be burned in a reasonably clean manner. Maybe the gas company quietly bought the rights to the tech, to hide it away?
I worked on coal combustion research for 30 years. Ran lots of pilot projects.
Coal is actually very clean with regard to what are called “primary pollutants.” A huge fraction of plant cost goes into cleaning up sulfur, nitrogen, airborne particulate, and solid waste emissions. The concerns about coal being “dirty” are vastly overblown by the loud and influential leftist greeniacs. They, of course, completely ignore the really bad and huge environmental impacts of wind and solar generation. They are different from the “primary pollutants” you get from burning coal, but they are very real nonetheless. From the millions of tons of CO2 you get when you make cement for the windmill concrete foundations to killing of raptors, insects and whales with wind turbines, there are many bad problems swept under the rug. Wind turbines require tens of millions of tons of concrete in the earth to stay upright, concrete that will never be removed or reclaimed.
Forty years ago, natural gas production took off due to directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing. At the time, it was often said it was a “gas bubble” and could not last. But it has lasted four decades.
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