Alaska is known for oil and natural gas, but the Great Land also has billions of tons of coal. It's not as easy to mine as in some places, being widely scattered across a vast, often wild landscape, but it's there, and it's usable. Coal is still, after all, a vital part of America's energy picture, and new coal plants aren't the smoke-belching ones of the past.
We all want clean air and water, after all. Nobody cares more for the environment than those of us who live out in it. But coal, especially the new, efficient plants, can and will still be useful, in Alaska and elsewhere.
So, it may not be surprising to note that Alaska is starting development of the first new coal-fired electrical plant built in the United States since 2013.
Terra Energy Center is investing $1 billion into a deal for a planned coal project in Alaska. The Alaska Coal Power Plant Project marks the first investment in new US coal power in more than a decade. US has been recently relying on clean energy projects such as Natrium Demonstration Project to meet its power needs.
The in-principal agreement with Hyundai Heavy Industries Power Systems for an order of power-plant boilers was described in a US Interior Department fact sheet Monday. The transaction is one of several that advanced during talks at the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum in Tokyo this weekend.
This looks to be part of a trend to keep coal as a major source of energy. And why is this important? It's all about data and data storage, in our increasingly digital lifestyle.
Amy Oliver Cooke, the founder, President, and Chairman of the Board of Always On Energy Research, has more details.
States are trading reliable, dispatchable electricity for intermittent wind and solar, driving up costs and reducing reliability in exchange for emission reductions that have little impact on global temperatures. Not all megawatts are equal. We need an honest conversation about coal. Without firm, always-on generation, we cannot meet the demands of our 21st -century economy.
That generation can be delivered by coal, natural gas, or nuclear power. But the United States has vast deposits of coal. Furthermore, the efficiency of coal plants has increased, and the emissions of those plants have decreased; there are few good reasons not to include coal as part of our nation's energy picture, and many reasons to keep it in the portfolio - not the least of which is our ever-more-energy-hungry, increasingly technological lifestyles.
Artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and the electrification of everything are driving a surge in electricity demand that America’s grid cannot meet. NERC’s 2025 Electricity Supply and Demand data projects U.S. peak summer demand across all assessment areas reaching nearly 967,000 megawatts by 2030, an 18% increase from today.
There are security issues involved, as well. There are very real problems involved in the possibility that data centers, which house so much of our information, will be located in places where energy is cheaper and more reliable, but the countries that may be hosting those data centers are considerably less reliable.
The consequences are real. Data centers form the physical backbone of AI, cloud computing, electronic health records, financial markets, and defense logistics. Hyperscalers making decade-long infrastructure commitments cannot afford unreliable or high-priced power. If they cannot get it here, they will look elsewhere, including countries unburdened by philosophical objections to coal, gas, or nuclear. Those countries may require that our data be stored there. Every gigawatt of data center load we fail to serve will move somewhere with fewer constraints and less accountability.
That's an unsettling notion.
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Around the nation, utility companies are fighting to keep coal plants operating. As many as 30 plants are involved in these efforts, including an Xcel Energy plant in Comanche, Colorado, an Alliant Energy plant in Wisconsin, and a Dominion Energy plant in Clover, Virginia; these plants are remaining open longer than initially planned, but in no small part due to demand for reliable energy that the various "alternative" sources can't supply. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is even more optimistic, recently estimating that as many as 45 coal-fired electrical plants, originally planned for closure, are remaining open, and Secretary Wright, on behalf of the Trump administration, is taking the credit.
It's coal or go out of business, in many of these places.
And then there's the primary Baby Ruth bar in this swimming pool: China, which is opening coal-fired power plants at a mad clip. They aren't about to stop, all their protestations about their (fake) "green" energy efforts notwithstanding; and if there's one place we do not want to suddenly become more attractive to the placement of big data centers, it's China.
Our 21st-century AI buildout cannot pause for permitting reform, and national security infrastructure cannot wait to litigate pipelines. The economic opportunity of leading the digital economy belongs to those willing to power it. Right now, that means keeping coal in the conversation.
That's correct in every particular. Fortunately, the current administration gets it.
