By Kennedy Maize
President Trump last week (Feb. 11) ordered his government’s largest energy consumer — the Department of Defense, which he insistently and erroneously calls the “Department of War” — to look to domestic coal for its electricity needs in the future.
At the same time, the nation’s largest public electric utility — the federal government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority — said it will backtrack on plans to close two large, elderly coal-fired power plants, which it had planned to shut down before the second Trump administration took over control of its board of directors.
In one of his many executive orders — Strengthening United States National Defense With America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Fleet — the White House says, “Given our Nation’s vast coal resources and the proven reliability of our coal-fired generation fleet in providing continuous, on-demand baseload power, it is imperative that the Department of War (DOW) prioritize the preservation and strategic utilization of coal-based energy assets.”
To that end, DOD and the “Department of Energy ‘shall seek to procure power from the United States coal generation fleet by approving long-term Power Purchase Agreements, or entering into any similar contractual agreements, with coal-fired energy production facilities to serve DOW installations or other mission-critical facilities….”
In typical Trump administration policymaking, the executive order appears to be hortatory, without much background consideration. The administration’s approach to policy often appears to be “shoot, ready, maybe even aim.”
While the White House was pushing its Pentagon coal plan, DOE announced it has approved “$175 million in funding for six projects to modernize, retrofit, and extend the useful life of coal-fired power plants that serve rural and remote communities across the United States, keeping dependable energy sources online, strengthening grid reliability, and helping keep electricity costs low for American families and businesses.” The projects are located in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky.
Reviewing the administration’s latest coal-centric moves, Bloomberg News wrote that while the actions “will likely extend the lifespan of several generators, they fall short of the main thing needed to develop new coal capacity: convincing private investors to take the financial — and political — risks.”
Bloomberg quoted Kevin Book, managing director of Washington-based CleanView Energy Partners, a Washington consultancy, “When the political pendulum can eradicate new investment in new plants and mines, you don’t get a lot of it. This is likely to be incremental but not transformational.”
Bloomberg’s headline was “Coal will need more than the army to pull off a US revival.”
In a tangential development, on Friday (Feb. 13), West Virginia-based Greenbriar Minerals gave 60-day’s notice that it will shut seven mines in the state in April, laying off 530 miners. As reported by the statewide news service MetroNews, the company issued a statement saying that because the mines are operating at a loss, the company “is taking steps to preserve liquidity and protect shareholder value. Production is being immediately curtailed to cover contractual commitments carried over from 2025, which are expected to be fulfilled by March 2026.”
In parallel — and it very likely was planned to be that way — the Trump-controlled giant TVA power agency, selling electricity to some 10 million customers in seven states and with about $13 billion in annual revenues while receiving no federal funds — decided to keep two large, elderly coal-fired power plants fired up.
In a news release, TVA’s board of directors ratified what they had said days before that they would do: step away from closing two giant coal-fired power plants scheduled for death with dignity. TVA said it will “take steps toward continued operation of the Kingston and Cumberland Fossil Plants beyond previously scheduled retirement dates, aligning with the Administration’s energy dominance strategy to prioritize domestic energy production that strengthens America’s economy and security.”
The 1,400-MW Kingston plant went into service in 1955, primarily to serve the load at the federal government’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory complex, at a 2024 adjusted cost of $2.3 billion. It is best known for the 2008 failure of its large coal ash pond, the largest industrial accident in U.S. history, which cost TVA $1 billion by the time the cleanup was completed in 2015.
Cumberland, a two-unit, 2,470-MW plant, was commissioned in 1973. It features two of the tallest chimneys in the world at 1001 feet, built in 1970. The stacks are no longer in use, as TVA built smaller stacks as part of their project to install flue gas scubbers to control sulfur dioxide emissions. The plant cost $2.9 billion in 2024 dollars.
The TVA decision reflected Trump’s victory in long-running political warfare with the TVA board when he came into office last year. The battle included Trump firing sitting TVA board members, retirement of the longtime CEO, multiple threats, and ultimate victory for the White House. Knoxville public radio station WUOT reported, “The board met with a quorum for the first time in nearly a year after President Trump’s drawn-out shakeup of its leadership sparked rumors of privatization.”
During the White House rollout of his latest coal executive order, Trump went out of his way to slam the now-compliant TVA. USA Today reported, “‘Trump is on the scene now,’ the president said while mocking the salary of TVA CEO Don Moul, vowing to ‘make his life miserable.’” In a combination of salary and performance incentives, Moul can earn up to $6 million annually.
That amount is modest compared to what CEOs in private companies of similar scale or smaller than TVA are making. Disgraced former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones in 2019 made $20.8 million, according to testimony in his criminal trial in Ohio last week.
The Washington Post editorial board, which has been critical of Trump’s love for coal recently, again took on the White House’s coal initiatives shortly after the issuance of the executive order. In an editorial headlined “Another government sop to an ailing industry,” the newspaper said, “An executive order requiring the military to purchase coal puts politics over the free market.”
The Post commented, “The country needs more energy to sustain growth, but that only underscores the need for the government to get out of the way. It is telling that despite these economic forces, no new coal plants have been under development for more than a decade. And it’s because investors understand that other technologies are becoming cheaper and come with far fewer health and environmental consequences.”