Christine Ho, christine.ho@sierraclub.org
Washington, D.C. - According to reporting, Donald Trump and his administration are planning to issue executive orders pushing the Department of Energy to issue additional emergency orders that force retiring polluting power plants to stay online to power data centers for big tech companies.
The report indicates that the White House is concerned with “building new data centers for artificial intelligence,” while the administration has taken drastic actions to stop clean energy development while expediting oil and gas leases at the same time. In September 2024, Sierra Club released its Demanding Better framework which details how tech companies can decarbonize the grid while meeting its power needs. In June, Sierra Club sent an open letter to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, calling on the tech giants to push back against the Trump administration’s expansion of fossil fuels in the name of Big Tech.
Under the Trump administration, two power plants—J.H. Campbell in Michigan and Eddystone in Pennsylvania—have already received orders of this kind and have been forced to delay their planned retirements. J.H. Campbell’s parent company announced that the extension had cost $29 million in the first five weeks. Costs to comply with the two orders will be paid by customers across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest region, according to a recent decision from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. According to Sierra Club’s ‘Ticked Off’ tracker, the estimated direct cost to ratepayers that these two facilities alone have accumulated since their delayed retirement dates is over $100 million dollars.
The Sierra Club and other organizations have filed rehearing requests for both of these illegal extensions. In August, the Sierra Club took the DOE to court over its failure to respond to the rehearing order regarding J.H. Campbell, and are challenging the cost recovery rulings at FERC for both plants.
In response, Sierra Club Senior Advisory Jeremy Fisher issued the following statement:
“Donald Trump and his fossilized friends have come up with yet another plan to force hardworking Americans to pay off Big Tech’s energy bills to the tune of billions of dollars—all to prop up a few coal executives.
“Clean solar and wind energy are the cheapest and fastest sources of electricity, and yet this administration is putting its foot on the neck of a huge source of jobs, making it impossible to build, all while forcing you and I to pay for the rising cost of dirty fossil fuels. Trump’s games to keep expensive coal plants online will drive up customers’ electricity bills. If Big Tech companies, like Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, continue to stay silent while this administration forces aging, expensive, deadly coal plants to stay online to power their data centers, they are complicit in this plan to take money out of every day Americans’ pockets and give it to the fossil fuel industry.”
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.