Oh, the irony of Craig No. 1!

Trump orders Craig coal unit planned for retirement to stay open. But it so happens the unit is broken. Ludicrous says Polis team. Sierra Club challenges basis for emergency declaration.

by Allen Best

It was no surprise. Tri-State Generation and Transmission has said for at least three months that it expected to get orders from the Trump administration to continue operating a coal-burning unit at Craig, in northwest Colorado, beyond its scheduled retirement on Dec. 31, 2025.

The order was posted at 6 p.m. MST Tuesday. Citing emergency authority claimed by Presidential Donald Trump, Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered the coal unit to remain in operation through March 2026. The order cited a sudden increase in demand for electricity, or a shortage of generation capacity.

The irony of the order is that it was issued when the 446.4-megawatt unit was out of operation, according to a statement issued by the office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

“Ludicrously, the coal plant isn’t even operational right now, meaning repairs — to the tune of millions of dollars — just to get it running, all on the backs of rural Colorado ratepayers!” the Polis team said.

“Going backwards is an attempt to force local communities to foot the bill to extend plant operations and will cost energy consumers more. Today’s action flies in the face of this careful planning, is inconsistent with market forces, and will hurt Coloradans.”

The Polis team estimated continued operations would cost tens of millions of dollars “to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed.”

Duane Highley, the chief executive of Tri-State, told Big Pivots in October that the wholesale supplier for cooperatives in Colorado and three other states did not need the electrical production at this time, as it is actually producing more than it needs.

Wright, in his order, No. 202-25-14, cited several justifications.

One justification was a 2024 report by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council forecast growth of 8.5% in peak demand during the next decade in Colorado and several adjoining states.

The order also said that Tri-State and its co-owners — Fort Collins-based Platte River Power Authority, Phoenix-based Salt River Project, Salt Lake City-based PacifiCorp., and Denver-based Xcel Energy — “take all measures necessary” to ensure that Craig Unit 1 is available to operate at the direction of either Western Area Power Administration in its role as a balancing authority or the southwest Power Pool West in its role as the reliability coordinator.

The Sierra Club emphasized the cost of operating Craig No. 1. It cited a recent report by Grid Strategies that found operating the unit past the retirement deadline will cost the plant owners $85 million per year. This is distinct from repairs that may be necessary.

“Trump is playing politics with coal,” said Margaret Kran-Annexstein, director of the Colorado chapter, in a statement issued shortly after the order was posted.

Matthew Gerhart, the senior attorney for the Sierra Club at its Denver office, had even stronger language in an interview with Big Pivots.

“I think this order is a joke even by this administration’s standards,” he said. “This is quite clearly just a political move. None of the documents they cite even come close to saying there is an emergency.”

Wright’s order cited the 2025-2026 Winter Reliability Assessment issued by the North America Electric Reliability Corporation. That report in November noted total and net internal demand increases of almost 1% driven primarily by data centers and commercial and industrial customer growth. Even so, the operating reserve margins in the Rocky Mountain were expected to be met before imports in all winter scenarios.

That being said, Xcel Energy almost a year ago began expressing concerns about resource adequacy.

Gerhart also found fault with Wright’s order that the unit be available to operate at the direction of the Southwest Power Pool West in its role as the reliability coordinator. SPP exists, but not the configuration — a regional transmission organization — that would allow SPP to do this, he said. SPP has a day-ahead market and also a balancing market but not the apparatus set up to manage the operation of Craig No. 1, he said.

Will Toor, director of the Colorado Energy Office, also pointed to the report from the North America Reliability Corporation that found no short-term or long-term elevated reliability risks in the Rocky Mountain region,

“These orders will take money out of the pockets of Colorado ratepayers, and especially harm rural communities across the West who could be forced to absorb the unnecessary excess costs required to keep this plant operational,” he said. “The Trump administration is engaging in Soviet-style central planning, driven by ideology rather than the realities of the electric grid, that will drive dirtier air and higher electric rates across our state. These orders are unlawful and will not improve energy security in Colorado or the region.”

Trump has claimed authority to order coal plants remain in operation under the Federal Power Act. That nearly century-old law explicitly gives presidents authority to order electrical plants to operate under duress of war or weather emergencies.

Since last April, Trump has sought to expand the power, citing emergencies caused by concerns about resource adequacy. The concerns, he has said, result from retiring fossil fuel and nuclear plants, dramatic growth in demand, and the intermittency of renewables.

Since 2019, 417.3 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity across six units at three locations have retired in Colorado, said Wright’s order, citing the Western Electricity Coordinating Council. “Looking forward, by 2029, about 3,700 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity in Colorado is scheduled to be retired.” The order said that during that time, 675.6 megawatts of natural gas-fired generating capacity in Colorado will retire as well.

In 2025, wind accounted for over 5,300 megawatts of Colorado’s electricity generating capacity, the order noted.

Wright’s order described wind as intermittent. Of course, coal can be intermittent, too. That has been demonstrated repeatedly at Pueblo, particularly in the case of Comanche 3. The coal unit went down again in August and is not expected to be restored into operation until June 2026. In its absence, Xcel asked — and the Polis administration agreed — that Comanche 2 would not be retired this month, as had been planned for several years.

As for Craig No. 1, its retirement was planned in an agreement reached almost a decade ago. Air quality standards in Rocky Mountain National Park and other national parks and wilderness areas are being violated in part because of emissions from the unit.

The Trump administration first cited the Federal Power Act earlier this year this year in plants in Michigan and in Pennsylvania and has recently used that same emergency power to order continued operation of fossil fuel plants in Indiana and Washington.

This story has been updated to correct several errors: 1) the megawatt capacity of the coal unit in question, and 2) the estimated annual cost of continued operation of the coal unit made by Grid Strategies. It has also been expanded to include a statement by Will Toor of the Colorado Energy Office.