Shitstain Orders Another Coal Power Plant To Remain Online To Meet "Energy Emergency" That Does Not Exist
The last coal-fired power plant in Washington state was set to go cold at the end of the year. It would then switch to natural gas, cutting carbon emissions in half. The shutdown had been in the works for 15 years and was mandated by state law. It required the Canadian energy company that owns the power plant, TransAlta, to retrain workers and ease the local community’s economic transition.
But the farewell to coal was cancelled this week by the Trump administration. In furtherance of the president’s crusade to keep America’s coal plants burning, the Department of Energy announced Tuesday that an “emergency exists” in the Pacific Northwest “due to a shortage of electricity.” To keep the lights on, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that the Centralia electric generating facility in southwest Washington must continue to burn coal for at least 90 more days.
“Issuance of this order will meet the emergency and serve the public interest,” said Wright, who issued a similar order last summer that blocked the planned retirement of an aging coal-fired plant in Michigan. There is, however, no imminent shortage of electricity in Washington state or across the Pacific Northwest, according to state officials and regional energy experts.
“Let’s be clear: there’s no emergency here,” said a joint statement by Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, along with the state’s attorney general and ecology director. “The Trump administration has conveniently ignored the law and the facts. The TransAlta power plant is days away from completing its shutdown—a milestone the company and the state have been working toward since 2011. The workers have moved on. There’s no coal left to burn.”
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18122025/trumps-energy-secretary-orders-a-washington-state-coal-plant-to-remain-open/