Recent administrative efforts to endorse new coal-fired power plants and repair outdated plants are making my blood boil. For more than 30 years, I have worked tirelessly along with thousands of other public health and climate scientists to understand the very real public health threats posed by burning fossil fuels like coal. Coal-fired power plants are some of the worst offenders when it comes to causing harm to human health and the environment. In addition to being a health hazard for anyone living downwind of the coal-burning plants, it’s more expensive and less reliable than other cleaner sources for power.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why coal is bad for health. 

• When coal is burned in power plants, it releases soot – tiny particles that get deep into people’s lungs and bloodstreams. Mercury in soot is also a severe health hazard because it releases a potent neurotoxin that contributes to many chronic illnesses. Exposure to soot is linked to cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease, neurological and developmental disorders. Children and senior citizens are particularly vulnerable to impacts from coal-fired soot.
• Coal ash, the hazardous residue left after coal is burned, is a concoction of toxic metals (like lead, mercury and arsenic), cancer-causing compounds, and other dangerous substances. Power plants produce about 70 million tons of it each year. In April 2026, the Trump EPA proposed weakening federal coal ash standards.
• In 2023, a study published in Science magazine reported that:
  • Air pollution from coal power plants is associated with greater mortality than previously thought.
  • Such deaths have decreased due to air pollution regulations and coal power plant retirements.

Coal is not cheap

Prior to this administration, many utilities had already started phasing out coal plants in favor of clean energy because coal plants often need expensive repairs and emit costly, dirty fuel. Coal power is so expensive that, according to a 2023 study, 99% of the time it would be cheaper to get electricity by building entirely new wind and solar farms than it would be to buy power from existing coal plants. 

The Trump administration announced plans to provide up to $500 million in funding to coal-fired power plants in 10 states, along with an export terminal in California. The Columbia Energy Center, coal-fired plant co-owned by Alliant Energy, Madison Gas and Electric, and Wisconsin Public Service near Pardeeville, is expected to receive $19 million in federal funding for a modernization project. The plant was originally scheduled to retire by 2024. Alliant is exploring a gas conversion for one of the two primary generating units, so there is a potential for continued operations beyond the end of 2029 (the updated retirement date for the facility).

Note the Columbia plant has released more emissions of the health-harming pollutants nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide than any other Wisconsin coal-fired power plant from 2019 to 2023, the most recent five years for which data are available.

Additional costs for coal-fired energy also come from federal taxpayers subsidizing the industry for nearly 100 years. In 2026, the subsidies will be around $5.5 billion. Plus think about all the additional costs that taxpayers must absorb from the impacts of air pollutants on their health – at a time when healthcare subsidies have lapsed for millions of Americans.

There is no such thing as clean or cheap coal. As we approach America’s 250th anniversary, it’s more than time for a real Energy Independence Day from throwback policies that harm Americans and a focus on cleaner energy sources that protect human health and the environment.

The federal government will spend $700 million on building or refurbishing coal power infrastructure across the country in a boost to “clean, beautiful coal,” President Donald Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office.

Trump said he was invoking the Cold War-era Defense Production Act, which gives the president authority over domestic industry, to save 13 existing power plants and build two new ones. He said the move would save 14,000 coal jobs and lower energy costs, though the spending will not lower the price of gasoline or diesel fuel, which has spiked since Trump launched a war with Iran in February.

Trump criticized subsidies for wind power championed by Democrats, including his predecessor, Joe Biden, characterizing coal as the most important energy source to cultivate.

“It’s real power,” Trump said. “In terms of power, there’s really nothing like it. We have so many different alternatives. You talk about some, there’s no real alternative.” 

New coal plants would be built in Alaska and West Virginia, Trump said. A defunct plant in Maryland would also be restarted. Those projects would be funded with $200 million in Department of Energy grants.

Coal plants receiving a combined $425 million in Defense Production Act funding are in West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Wisconsin, according to the White House.

Coal mines benefiting from the move are in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wyoming, North Dakota and New Mexico, according to the White House.

The administration would also spend $75 million, authorized by the Defense Production Act, to help open a long-delayed new coal export terminal in Oakland, California, the White House said.

Administration officials said Thursday’s announcement built on a record of the past 18 months in which the administration has saved dozens of coal production facilities.

“It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. “If you look at our efforts across the whole government, so far 45 coal plants are open today that would not be open.”

Republican approval

Trump Cabinet members, congressional Republicans and two governors, Wyoming’s Mark Gordon and West Virginia’s Patrick Morrissey, joined Trump for the Oval Office announcement, with several extolling the importance of the coal industry after Trump spoke.

Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin praised Trump for intervening to help the industry and refocusing federal energy policy away from renewables.

Wright said Democratic policies were more responsible for high energy costs than the war in Iran, even though Republicans have held unified control of the federal government since January 2025 and the Trump administration has consistently touted its moves to encourage fossil fuel production.

“We wish they were lower, but gasoline prices in the U.S. are a little over $4. They’re $10 in Europe, they’re higher in Asia, they’re very high in California,” Wright said. The national average price for regular gasoline Thursday was $4.24 per gallon. 

“The bigger threat to energy prices in the United States is Democratic green energy policies,” Wright continued. “They have driven up energy prices far more than a conflict in Iran.”

Burgum said the president was perhaps the strongest advocate for coal in the country’s history.

He echoed Trump’s statements that the coal industry needed to be reinvigorated after the Biden administration focused more on renewable energy production.

“The prior administration, under Biden, had gone so far down the path of pursuing the highly subsidized, intermittent, weather-dependent sources of electricity that our grid was at risk. You understood that and you understood how key coal is,” Burgum told Trump. “It’s the backbone of having affordable, reliable and secure American energy to power our country, our electric grid, power our competitiveness in AI, and power all the manufacturing that’s coming back.”

Morrissey said the moves would benefit his state.

“We believe your policies are going to allow America to compete and win,” Morrissey said. “West Virginia is going to supply the coal, the gas, the nuclear to help make that happen. So I’m very excited by everything you’re doing.”

Greens decry ‘polluter handout’

Environmental groups blasted the move, saying it propped up a failing industry and would have little long-term impact on energy prices or reliability.

Jesse Lee, a senior adviser with the advocacy group Climate Power, said the spending on coal projects would not lower utility prices, which he said have climbed 18% during Trump’s second term.

“He’s gaslighting the American people by claiming that this move will lower electricity prices in the middle of an energy affordability crisis that he created,” Lee said. 

Environmental groups noted the coal industry heavily contributed to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Several environmental advocates, including Lena Moffitt, the executive director of the climate group Evergreen Action, suggested that relationship drove Trump to promote coal at the expense of renewable energy sources.

“Spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk,” Moffitt wrote. “Trump is handing out taxpayer money to coal barons and leaving us with nothing but higher energy costs. … There’s no coal revival waiting around the corner—just polluters collecting a handout while their friends run the White House and Americans foot the bill.”