Trump Administration Keeps Colorado Coal Plant Open to Ensure Affordable, Reliable and Secure Power in Colorado

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today issued an emergency order to keep a Colorado coal plant operational to ensure Americans maintain access to affordable, reliable and secure electricity.

Energy.gov

March 30, 2026

WASHINGTON— U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today issued an emergency order to keep a Colorado coal plant operational to ensure Americans maintain access to affordable, reliable and secure electricity. The order directs Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association (Tri-State), Platte River Power Authority, Salt River Project, PacifiCorp, and Public Service Company of Colorado (Xcel Energy), in coordination with the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) Rocky Mountain Region and Southwest Power Pool (SPP), to take all measures necessary to ensure that Unit 1 at the Craig Station in Craig, Colorado is available to operate. Unit One of the coal plant was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2025 but on December 30, 2025, Secretary Wright issued an emergency order directing Tri-State and the co-owners to ensure that Unit 1 at the Craig Station remains available to operate.

“The last administration’s energy subtraction policies threatened America’s energy security and positioned our nation to likely experience significantly more blackouts in the coming years—thankfully, President Trump won’t let that happen,” said Energy Secretary Wright. “The Trump Administration will continue taking action to ensure we don’t lose critical generation sources. Americans deserve access to affordable, reliable, and secure energy to power their homes all the time, regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.”

Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, coal plants across the country are reversing plans to shut down. In 2025, more than 17 gigawatts (GW) of coal-power electricity generation were saved.

On April 1, once Tri-State and the WAPA Rocky Mountain Region join the SPP RTO West expansion, SPP is directed to take every step to employ economic dispatch to minimize costs to ratepayers.

According to DOE’s Resource Adequacy Report, blackouts were on track to potentially increase 100 times by 2030 if the U.S. continued to take reliable power offline as it did during the Biden administration. NERC cautioned in its 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment that “the continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months.”

This order is in effect beginning on March 31, 2026, through June 28, 2026.

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