Thanks, AI!! At Least 15 US Coal Plants Set For Retirement Are Online "For The Forseeable Future" [View all]

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Since the second Trump administration took power in January, at least 15 coal plants have had planned retirements pushed back or delayed indefinitely, a DeSmog analysis found. That’s mostly due to an expected rise in electricity demand, a surge largely driven by the rise of high-powered data centers needed to train and run artificial intelligence (AI) models. But some of the plants have been ordered to stay open by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), despite significant environmental and financial costs. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, has frequently cited “winning the AI race” as a rationale for re-investing in coal.

The fossil fuel facilities are located in regions across the country, from Maryland to Michigan and Georgia to Wyoming. Together, their two dozen coal-fired generators emitted more than 68 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2024. That’s more than the total emissions of Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. combined. Nearly 75 percent of the coal plants were on track to shutter in the next two years.

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On January 31, Southern Company, a utility serving over 9 million customers across 15 states, announced plans to delay the retirement of generators at two of the largest coal plants in the U.S., both in Georgia. The massive, coal-fired units — two at the Bowen Steam Plant outside Euharlee, and one at the Robert W. Scherer Power Plant in Juliette — had been scheduled to go offline between 2028 and 2035. Under its revised plan, the company pushed retirement back to as late as January 1, 2039(though both plants would be 40 percent co-fired with natural gas by 2030 in that scenario).

In legal documents and public statements, company spokespeople point to data centers as a key rationale for the delays. Last month, at an industry conference in Las Vegas, Southern Company CEO Chris Womack cited data center growth as a key factor keeping fossil energy online, according to the trade publication Data Center Dynamics. “We’re going to extend coal plants as long as we can because we need those resources on the grid,” he reportedly said. Next door in Mississippi, Southern Company also delayed the closure of a 500 MW generator at the Victor J. Daniel coal plant in Jackson County. It pushed the retirement back from 2028 until “the mid 2030s.” In documents filed with Mississippi’s Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, Southern appeared to cite a 500 MW Compass Datacenters project as a reason for the change. Southern has pledged to be net-zero by 2050.

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https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/12/15-coal-plant-retirements-delayed-ai-data-centers-trump-doe-orders/