Trump administration has handed giveaways to nearly half of U.S. coal plants

• The Trump administration has handed direct support to nearly half of the country’s coal plants, according to new analysis from Environmental Defense Fund.
• These support measures include $950 million in tax dollars to help prop up 24 coal plants, Clean Air Act exemptions for 70 coal plants and $593 million in costs incurred to ratepayers from Department of Energy mandates forcing six coal plants to run past their planned retirement dates.

The Trump administration has given direct support to almost 50% of the nation’s coal plants, imposing high costs on Americans, according to data analyzed by Environmental Defense Fund.

Coal Costs Americans, a new dashboard launched today by Environmental Defense Fund, tracks what these giveaways mean for Americans across the country.

“American families are paying the price for the Trump administration’s harmful actions to keep costly, aging and unreliable coal plants online,” said Surbhi Sarang, Director and Senior Attorney, Clean Power with Environmental Defense Fund. “Coal plant pollution, including mercury and other heavy metals, can damage children’s brains and cause a lifetime of devastating illness. There is no good reason to hand coal operators nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money to keep aging coal plants on life support, to provide them with loopholes to pollute our air and to make our lives more expensive while tearing down access to clean renewable energy.”

Over the past two decades, utilities across the country have scaled back on costly coal power, working with state regulators and grid operators to retire hundreds of older coal plants and transition to cleaner, less expensive sources of power like natural gas, wind and solar.

The analysis, which looks at the 184 coal plants operating in the U.S. that are connected to the grid, finds that 90 coal plants have been propped up by the Trump administration through cash handouts, free passes to pollute and requirements to stay online past their retirement dates — not including the Environmental Protection Agency’s harmful rollbacks of vital pollution limits for coal plants. These support measures from the Trump administration and the Department of Energy have staggering costs for Americans, according to the newly analyzed data:

• $950 million in taxpayer dollars to help prop up 24 coal plants
• Clean Air Act exemptions from limits on toxic pollution to 154 units across 70 coal plants
• $593 million in costs incurred to ratepayers, thus far, and as much as $860 million in health damages from the Department of Energy mandates forcing six coal plants to keep running past their planned retirement dates

Users can view an interactive map of the 184 grid-connected coal plants operating in the U.S. to see which facilities have received one or more measures of direct federal support from the Trump administration. The tool also includes data on plants’ emissions, age of the plants and historical data on where it would have been less expensive to transition to clean power sources.

Earlier this year, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told a group of coal and mining executives that “many of the items on your wish list are now done.” And through a public records request, Environmental Defense Fund uncovered a 2025 letter from the head of the nation’s largest coal lobby to Energy Secretary Chris Wright asking for the federal government to take extreme measures to keep coal plants online that had been slated to retire. One of those coal plants, Michigan’s J.H. Campbell plant, has cost $303 million to operate since its planned retirement in May 2025, according to new financial filings released yesterday.

The full dataset is available for download here.