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This week, the Trump administration announced its most ambitious pro-coal plans yet — a multipronged effort to resuscitate the industry, despite the financial, health, and climate case against doing so.
The administration’s Monday announcement included three big pledges: The Department of Energy promised $625 million to prop up coal power plants, the Interior Department will open up 13 million acres of federal land for coal mining, and the EPA is delaying seven deadlines related to wastewater pollution from coal plants.
That promised DOE funding includes $350 million for recommissioning or modernizing coal power plants — an indication that the DOE will continue to force such facilities to stay open past their prime. The administration has already kept Michigan’s J.H. Campbell plant open for months beyond its planned retirement in May, racking up $29 million in costs to utility customers in just five weeks. At that rate, the plant would cost consumers $279 million each year to keep open, according to a recent Grid Strategies report.
J.H. Campbell is just one of roughly 30 coal plants that are supposed to retire through the end of 2028, when President Donald Trump’s term ends. Keeping them and other aging fossil-fuel plants open past their planned retirement could cost consumers as much as $6 billion each year, per Grid Strategies.
There’s a cheaper, and not to mention cleaner, way forward: According to a 2023 Energy Innovation report, every single soon-to-retire coal plant could be replaced with solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage at a net savings to consumers. The rollback of clean-energy tax credits weakens that calculation, but renewables remain the cheapest, quickest way to add new power generation to the grid.
The Interior Department’s expansion of coal mining lands, meanwhile, ignores the fact that coal production has tanked in the U.S. since its peak in 2008, and that coal plants are already well stocked as it is.
And then there’s the administration’s focus on coal-plant wastewater — a critical piece of the industry’s operations, as burning coal produces coal ash, which can contaminate groundwater with deadly toxins. The Biden administration’s EPA had cracked down on loopholes that let power-plant operators avoid responsibility for these pollutants. Monday’s actions are among the Trump administration’s latest efforts to undermine those rules and let coal-plant owners off the hook for contamination.
Coal’s climate and health impacts — the worst among any U.S. electricity source — went unmentioned in any of the departmental plans. No surprise there: Late last week, it was also reported that the Energy Department has directed employees to avoid the use of pesky terms like “emissions” or “climate change.”
Fossil-fuel permitting keeps rolling amid shutdown
The U.S. government ran out of funding Wednesday after Congress failed to pass a stopgap bill, but the Trump administration is seemingly picking and choosing how to implement the shutdown.
At the EPA, where the administration has already implemented mass layoffs, about 89% of staff is set to be furloughed. Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, that reduced capacity could stymie Administrator Lee Zeldin’s deregulatory agenda.
Meanwhile the Interior Department will keep fossil-fuel permitting rolling along. More than half of the Bureau of Land Management’s staff will stay onboard to approve fossil-fuel projects under the Trump administration’s “energy emergency,” relying on money generated by permitting fees. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will similarly keep processing fossil-fuel permits and working on upcoming oil and gas lease sales, but “will cease all renewable energy activities,” according to a federal document.
EV tax credits are dead. What’s next?
Federal EV tax credits met their end this week, and automakers are already adapting to the new normal. Hyundai announced Wednesday that it’ll reduce the price of its popular Ioniq 5 by as much as $9,800 now that $7,500 federal rebates have ended. Tesla meanwhile took the opposite approach, raising lease prices for its models.
The looming expiration juiced EV sales for Hyundai, as well as Ford, General Motors, and Tesla, which all reported quarterly records from July through September. The longer-term impact of the tax-credit rollback remains uncertain, but it’ll be especially acute in the Southeastern U.S., Canary Media’s Elizabeth Ouzts reports. The region has deservedly been nicknamed the “battery belt” over the last few years as the Inflation Reduction Act spurred a wave of EV and battery manufacturing plants in Georgia, North Carolina, and beyond.
Inside the DOE cuts: The Trump administration says it’ll claw back $7.56 billion in grants for clean-energy projects, largely in states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, though grid-boosting projects that would’ve benefited red states are also on the chopping block. (Canary Media)
Hydropower’s looming crisis: Nearly 450 U.S. hydropower facilities are scheduled for relicensing over the next decade, but mounting costs and layers of bureaucracy could lead many to shut down instead. (Canary Media)
Deregulatory side effect: An Energy Innovation analysis finds Americans will end up paying more to fill their gas tanks if the Trump administration rolls back tailpipe-emissions rules that incentivize automakers to make more efficient vehicles. (The Verge)
Storage stays strong: Utility-scale battery storage set a quarterly record of 4.9 gigawatts installed in the U.S. in the second quarter of this year, though installations could fall as much as 10% in 2027 as federal support wanes. (US Energy Storage Monitor)
Battery-based breeze: Legacy air-conditioning giant Carrier is pairing AC units with batteries to relieve stress on the grid when lots of customers need to keep cool. (Canary Media)
Community solar cools: Community solar installations slowed 36% in the first half of 2025 from the same period last year, and the end of federal incentives suggests deployment will continue to fall. (Wood Mackenzie)
Trash or treasure: A billion dollars’ worth of aluminum cans end up in U.S. landfills every year, but with producers looking to curb their emissions and tariffs raising the price of virgin materials, that waste is becoming more and more valuable. (Canary Media)
America’s Lithium: The U.S. Energy Department says it’ll take 5% stakes in both Lithium Americas and the firm’s Thacker Pass project as the mine shapes up to become a key domestic source of lithium. (CNBC)
Curtains for coal: New England’s last coal-burning power plant, Merrimack Station in New Hampshire, shuts down after 65 years in operation. (Concord Monitor)
A correction was made on Oct. 3, 2025: Hyundai announced the price drop for its Ioniq 5 on Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025, not on Thursday, Oct. 2.
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