Trump Administration Forces Washington’s Last Coal Plant to Stay Open Past Retirement, Needlessly Driving up Electricity Bills and Harming Health

(WASHINGTON – Dec 17, 2025) The Department of Energy (DOE) issued an illegal mandate to force the Centralia coal plant in Washington to remain open 90 days after its planned retirement at the end of this year. The more than 50-year-old facility – Washington state’s last remaining coal plant – was slated for conversion to natural gas, under a long-standing agreement between the state of Washington and the plant’s owner.

DOE’s latest mandate, issued late Tuesday, follows orders issued earlier this year forcing the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in Michigan and the Eddystone oil-and-gas plant in Pennsylvania to stay open past their retirement dates, which public interest groups have challenged. DOE has repeatedly extended the emergency orders for both plants, despite evidence that both plants are unreliable, highly-polluting facilities, and are not necessary to meet near or long-term energy needs. Financial filings show that the Campbell plant alone racked up $80 million in net losses – over $600,000 every day during the months of June through the end of September. Those costs are being recovered from households and businesses across 11 states in the Midwest, even though the regional grid had more than enough electric power over that period.

“Once again, the Trump administration is upending state and local decisions to force an aging, costly, polluting coal plant to stay open,” said Ted Kelly, Director and Lead Counsel for U.S. Clean Energy at Environmental Defense Fund.

“Like we’ve seen with the Michigan coal plant, it’s households and businesses that end up paying out of pocket to keep these old, uneconomic plants on life support. It’s completely unnecessary, since years and years went into carefully planning the retirement of Washington’s last coal plant and shifting the grid to cleaner, more affordable power sources.

“Unfortunately, households and businesses across the region can expect higher electricity bills and more asthma-causing pollution in the new year.”

Despite claims from the Trump administration that coal is “reliable,” data from North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) shows that coal experiences the most outages from equipment failures of any power source in the U.S. 

A report from Grid Strategies found that if DOE mandates that all large fossil fuel power plants scheduled to retire between now and the end of 2028 continue to operate, the cost to ratepayers could exceed $3 billion per year.