Coal Is the New Bridge Fuel
5th June 2025
The strains on America’s power grids are easy to explain. After remaining relatively flat for a decade, electricity demand is now projected to jump 50% over the next 10 years. Investments in server farms, artificial intelligence, crypto-mining, and a revival of manufacturing activity account for most of this growth. For example, a recent study by the Berkeley National Laboratory found that data centers consumed 4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 but will account for 12% of power demand by 2028.
At the same time, construction of new base-load power plants—natural gas, nuclear, and coal—has plummeted. Driven by federal, state, and local tax incentives, wind and solar have accounted for the lion’s share of new installed generation in recent years. The problem, of course, is that these power sources are intermittent, which is why New Orleans lost electricity in May and why the Iberian Peninsula suffered a blackout in April.
Although several states—most notably Texas—have adopted programs to encourage new construction of natural gas plants, for the near term it’s critical to keep the nation’s remaining coal plants online.
Since 2010, 300 “always on” coal-fired power plants have been closed, reducing its share of generation from 45% to 16% nationwide. Only about 200 remain on the regional grids today.
The Trump administration has taken several steps to enhance power grid reliability and resiliency by keeping these coal plants on-line, including a series of executive orders signed by the President in early April. One of these orders allows a number of aging coal plants slated for closure to continue producing power.