By Mark Jaffe | The Colorado Sun
The coal-fired Craig Station is still set to close in 2028 — even as the Trump administration is making a drive to keep coal units going — according to the operator’s electric resource plan filed with Colorado utility regulators on April 11.
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, which runs the plant, says in its preferred plan that the Craig Unit 1 will close by the end of this year and units 2 and 3 will be shuttered in 2028.
Battery storage and a natural gas-fired plant will be added in Moffat County as part of the plan.
Three days before Tri-State filed its plan with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to expand production of “beautiful clean coal” and a proclamation easing Environmental Protection Agency standards for the plants.
A second presidential executive order was aimed at blocking state environmental and clean energy policies it called “burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies.”
In response, Gov. Jared Polis called the Trump administration’s action “federal overreach.”
“We are evaluating the executive orders,” Lee Boughey, a Tri-State spokesperson, said in an email. “Tri-State’s preferred plan reflects previously announced retirements, driven primarily by economics for Craig Station.”