How much are Trump’s pro-coal policies costing us?

The Trump administration loves coal plants. The rest of us are paying the price in higher electricity bills, poorer health, and worsening climate change. 

That’s the takeaway of an analysis out today from the Environmental Defense Fund. It finds the Trump administration is directly or indirectly propping up nearly half the U.S. coal fleet with taxpayer-funded handouts, Clean Air Act exemptions, and emergency orders forcing retiring units to keep running. 

These actions represent a thumb on the scale for the country’s least cost-effective and most heavily polluting source of electricity. They also serve as a promise kept: As EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told coal and mining executives this summer, ​“Many of the items that were on your wish list are now done.” 

“This is a lot of government support and intervention that’s going to benefit an industry much more than it will benefit the American public,” said Surbhi Sarang, EDF’s senior attorney for clean power. “[Coal plants] produce pollution, which will just cost communities more. And they’re an expensive form of energy that will cost communities more.” 

EDF’s analysis covers 184 U.S. coal plants that are operating and connected to the grid. Of those, 90 have been ​“propped up” in one way or another by the administration. 

Seventy coal plants have received exemptions from limits on toxic pollution set by the Biden administration under the Clean Air Act. That’s allowed them to continue operating without investing in better controls. The Trump administration invited plant owners to seek these exceptions last spring, telling companies that all they had to do to skirt the regulations was send an email to a special EPA inbox.

The primary rule these plants have evaded would require them to reduce mercury pollution by 70% and emissions of nickel, arsenic, lead, and other toxic metals by two-thirds. Those limits were projected to yield more than $430 million in health and other benefits for communities through 2037, according to a May press release announcing the launch of an investigation by U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) into the exemptions. 

“Coal plant pollution, including mercury and other heavy metals, can damage children’s brains and cause a lifetime of devastating illness,” Sarang said in a press release accompanying the report.

Since those exemptions were granted, the EPA has rescinded the Biden-era rule that imposed the pollution restrictions in the first place. But legal challenges could reverse that decision, Sarang said. And while the Trump administration claimed that complying with the rule would have forced plants to close down prematurely, modeling done by the Environmental Protection Agency during the Biden administration ​“showed that the costs could be absorbed and wouldn’t lead to any retirements,” she said. 

EDF’s report also identifies 24 coal plants that are slated to receive a collective $950 million in taxpayer funds from the U.S. Department of Energy. About half of that is the $525 million announced in September 2025 to help refurbish up to 11 plants, according to EDF. The remaining $425 million, unveiled in June, is to ​“expand and revitalize” 13 more facilities. 

Utilities, grid operators, and regulators have even been blocked from shutting down coal plants under the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of emergency authority. Since mid-2025, the DOE has repeatedly used this power to force six coal plants to keep running, despite a lack of evidence that their closure would threaten grid reliability. 

In September, a federal court ruled that the DOE acted unlawfully in its first such emergency order in May 2025 to force a Michigan coal plant to stay open. The administration has nonetheless continued issuing stay-open orders for that facility and others. 

EDF estimates that keeping these six coal plants running through June 2026 has cost utility customers up to $593 million and caused up to $860 million in health damages. 

Coal power has been on its way out for years in the U.S., falling from providing nearly half the country’s electricity generation capacity in 2011 to just 15% in 2024. That drop-off has been driven primarily by the increasingly poor economics of coal plants competing against cheap fossil gas and even cheaper solar, wind, and batteries. 

The DOE has stated that its support for coal plants will save the country about $50 billion, since the U.S. won’t have to build new power generation to fill in those gaps. But researchers have found that almost all of the country’s coal plants could be replaced with new clean energy and batteries at a net savings for utility customers. 

“If we have taxpayer resources, we should be putting that towards what is a public good, which is renewable energy,” Sarang said. ​“That will lower energy bills, it will lower medical costs, it will allow people to go to school and work not burdened by illness and respiratory disease.”