ASSOCIATED PRESS • April 26, 2025
Coal-fired power plants, long an increasingly money-losing proposition in the U.S., are becoming more valuable now that the suddenly strong demand for electricity to run Big Tech’s cloud computing and artificial intelligence applications has set off a full-on sprint to find new energy sources. President Trump suggested that coal can help meet surging power demand. He is wielding his emergency authority to entice utilities to keep older coal-fired plants online and producing electricity. Scores of coal-fired plants that have been shut down the past couple years — or will be shut down in the next couple years — are the object of growing interest from tech companies, venture capitalists, states and others competing for electricity. They have a very attractive quality: high-voltage lines connecting to the electricity grid that they aren’t using anymore and that a new power plant could use.