FACT CHECK: Trump’s Investment in Expensive Coal Power Will Spike Energy Costs and Make Americans Sicker 

Trump’s move to keep coal plants open will raise utility bills, as Americans are already reeling from an 18% spike in electricity prices under his watch 

Washington, DC – Today, Trump announced that he is spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to support aging coal plants and to build new coal facilities, making the energy affordability crisis even worse and exposing Americans to dangerous pollutants. The announcement comes as he spends nearly two billion dollars to keep clean energy off the grid as demand skyrockets, driving up costs. Since Trump took office, electricity prices have spiked by 18% on average, and despite Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s claim otherwise, Americans have spent almost $450 more on energy costs thanks to Trump’s war of choice. 

Trump tried to spin his announcement by claiming that coal power is the only way to feed skyrocketing demand from data centers, but even tech CEOs and utility companies admit that clean energy is the fastest, most affordable power source to add to the grid and lower energy costs. 

FACT: Energy analysts have warned that Trump’s previous efforts to prevent five aging coal plants from shutting down could cost utility customers as much as $6 billion by the end of 2028.

FACT: Americans have already spent more than $336 million to keep six aging fossil-fuel power plants, including the five coal plants, from retiring. Keeping one aging coal plant in Michigan running costs more than $600,000 a day.

FACT: Trump’s administration is paying energy companies to keep clean energy off the grid: giving TotalEnergies $928 million to abandon plans to build wind farms off the East Coast and paying other developers $885 million to walk away from their wind projects.

FACT: Americans have spent almost $450 extra per household on already-skyrocketing energy costs thanks to Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran. If prices remain the same at the one-year mark of the war, American households will spend $2,000 more on gas and energy. 

FACT: Between 2023 and 2025, utilities delayed the retirements of more than 30 generating units at 15 coal plants to power data centers. The 15 plants emitted almost 65 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023. Climate pollution rose in 2025, in part because of increased coal use.

FACT: A November 2023 study found that pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants caused 460,000 excess deaths between 1999 and 2020.

FACT: Solar energy, onshore wind, battery storage, and energy efficiency are some of the most rapidly scalable and cost-competitive ways to meet the increased energy demand from data centers. 

FACT: Clean energy is the least expensive and quickest power source to add to the grid – in the first half of 2025, solar and wind energy generation outpaced electricity demand and generated more power than coal for the first time on record.

FACT: Costs for wind and solar have fallen up to 90% over the past 15 years, making them cheaper than new gas and existing coal plants, even without subsidies.

FACT: It is cheaper to replace 99% of U.S. coal plants with clean energy than to keep them running, and the cost of new wind or solar is at least 30% cheaper than the cost of operating more than three-quarters of existing coal plants.

FACT: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said powering data centers with clean energy would “drive down the cost of AI.” 

FACT: The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas released an analysis showing that Trump’s effort to gut clean energy supply will double the inflationary effect of data center expansion.

FACT: The American people overwhelmingly oppose data centers powered by coal. Climate Power and Blue Rose Research polling shows that voters support data centers powered by clean energy by a +25-point margin and oppose those powered by fossil fuels by a 16-point margin.

FACT: Clean energy is reliable during winter storms. Texas’s grid was stable during Winter Storm Fern in January 2026 in large part due to new energy storage projects in the state, which provided power in times when it’s harder to meet demand.

FACT: Grid operator ISO New England found that residential solar panels strengthened the regional electric grid during winter months by reducing the need for backup oil generation.

FACT: Heating outages during Winter Storm Uri in Texas in 2021 were caused by failures at coal and gas plants. Coal and gas plants comprised 73% of the power generation capacity that experienced unplanned outages during the winter storm.