Will Trump Moves Provide Long-Term Boost to U.S. Coal?

The Trump administration's efforts to boost U.S. coal mining, coal exports and use of coal in electric generation are expected to provide a short-term boost in the economic activity around the fossil fuel. But there remain uncertainties about the longer-term implications for coal and coal-fired generation in the U.S.

Coal Benefits from Trump Actions, Market Decisions

U.S. electric generators used about 12% more thermal coal in 2025 than they did in 2024, reversing a decades-long decline in the domestic use of thermal coal, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The agency said the increase was due to a combination of: strong electric demand growth; the relatively high price of natural gas, a competing fuel for electric generation; and a hotter-than-average summer, which drove up electricity use.

Industrial Info Resources is tracking about 332 capital and maintenance projects in the U.S. coal mining industry valued at about $7 billion. But much of that planned spend is for metallurgical coal or thermal coal mine closures. Readers can view the project plans here.

Last year's increased coal-power burn in the U.S. has given rise to a fresh round of optimism by coal interests that a strategic inflection point has been reached, enabling coal to recapture some of the market share in electric fuels it has lost to natural gas and renewables.

By the Numbers

12%: The increase in thermal coal use by electric generators in the U.S. in 2025 compared to 2024 coal burn.

8%: The projected decrease in U.S. thermal coal power burn in 2026, according to an estimate made by the EIA, before Trump announced plans to boost coal.

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The Largest Coal Power Stations In The United States 

Coal once generated more than half the electricity in the United States, but its share has fallen sharply, sliding to roughly 15 to 16 percent by the mid-2020s as natural gas and renewables took over and aging plants shut down by the dozen. The plants that remain are enormous, most of them built in the 1970s and 1980s, and a steady wave of retirements means this list looks very different than it did a decade ago. Names that once topped these rankings, like Arizona's Navajo Generating Station, have been demolished entirely. These are the largest coal-fired power stations still operating in the country, ranked by generating capacity in megawatts. Because capacity figures shift as individual units retire or convert to gas, treat the numbers here as a recent snapshot.

1. Plant Bowen, Georgia 

Plant Bowen, near Euharlee in Bartow County, Georgia, is now the largest coal-fired power station in the United States, with a capacity of roughly 3,200 megawatts across its four units. Operated by Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, it came online between 1971 and 1975 and connects to the southeastern grid through 500-kilovolt transmission lines. Southern Company has signaled it expects to close the plant by 2035, though rising electricity demand from data centers has put even that timeline under review. 

2. Gibson Generating Station, Indiana

The Gibson Generating Station in Gibson County, Indiana, near the Wabash River, is Duke Energy's largest power plant, with a capacity in the range of 3,100 to 3,300 megawatts across five units. Built through the 1970s and early 1980s, it draws cooling water from a large man-made lake on the site that doubles as a wildlife and recreation area. Duke has laid out a staggered retirement and gas-conversion plan for the units stretching into the 2030s, a schedule it has repeatedly revised as demand projections change.

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 A Cost-Effective Solution to an Energy Emergency

On June 4, the Trump administration announced $700 million in funding for 17 coal power plants and one export facility. The investment in the country’s energy infrastructure includes upgrades to 13 currently operating plants, the reopening of two recently closed plants and development of two new plants. In total, the administration’s coal-focused efforts have now supported ongoing generation from 45 coal plants providing more than 40 gigawatts of coal power from 42 coal mines.

“Coal generation shields consumers from the impacts of volatile energy prices and supply challenges; it’s a vital piece of a sound energy strategy designed to meet the challenge of today’s AI-driven demand growth in the context of the conflict in the Middle East,” said Rich Nolan, NMA president and CEO, in praise of the administration’s announcement.

While the administration’s actions have garnered widespread support throughout coal country and certainly by those grappling with the nation’s grid reliability emergency, there has been no shortage of critics.

One of the most mystifying criticisms has been about cost, particularly the cost of orders to keep existing plants running and to invest in plant upgrades. Including previous support to upgrade six Appalachian coal plants, the administration’s efforts to upgrade 19 total plants and bring two more units back online has a price tag of several hundred million dollars. Not billions. Not tens of billions. On the scale of what has been afforded other sources of power, for reasons that weren’t nearly as urgent as today’s grid reliability crisis, this is all but a rounding error that provides outsized returns in the form of stable electricity that can be ramped up in times of high demand.

Recall, the myriad provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act for alternative sources of power were projected to cost $825 billion over a decade with some estimates exceeding a price tag of $1.2 trillion.

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