The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came to Kentucky Friday to announce a rollback of power plant emissions standards with state leaders.
The Louisville Gas & Electric Mill Creek Generating Station was the backdrop for the Trump administration’s announcement of its latest effort to boost declining coal generation by walking back Biden-era rules.
In this case, the more stringent 2024 mercury and air toxics limits on power plants. EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi said the agency would return to the earlier Obama-era standard.
“EPA action today rights the wrongs of the last administration's rule, and will return the industry to the highly effective, original MATS standards that helped pave the way for American energy dominance,” he said.
Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of America’s Power, a coal industry group, said utilities had spent $2.5 billion to comply with the original 2012 rule. She said they would have needed to spend another $1 billion to meet the 2024 requirements.
She said a third of U.S. coal generators are scheduled to retire in the next five years, at a time of rising electricity demand and prices.
“So we all know we need to add generation, but we can't do that if we continue to subtract,” she said. “Repealing regulations like the 2024 MATS rule helps prevent premature retirements. It strengthens grid reliability at a critical moment.”
While the officials present did not say the rule’s repeal would lead to new coal generation, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said it would help keep existing plants – including Mill Creek – on the grid.
“Under the old rule, Kentucky was under regulatory assault. Our power plants, as you've heard, would have faced massive costs and even closures.”
Fotouhi said because of the repeal of the Biden rule, Americans would see savings of $670 million over a decade, or about $78 million a year.
While coal has fallen behind other energy resources in the rest of the country, it remains a cultural and political force in Kentucky, if not an economic one. Coal mining jobs statewide have fallen to historic lows and production is generally in decline.
Nonetheless, coal generates 67% of Kentucky’s electricity, according to federal data, more than any state but West Virginia.
LG&E and Kentucky Utilities, a subsidiary of PPL, is a heavy user of coal, accounting for 84% of its generation mix in 2023. At that time, it received permission from state regulators to retire two coal units at Mill Creek and to build a natural gas combined cycle plant there.
The gas plant is still in the works, but the one of the Mill Creek coal retirements has been delayed from next year to 2031.
Lonnie Bellar, PPL Service Corporation’s executive vice president of engineering, construction and generation, said Kentucky’s coal generation performed well during a recent winter storm.
“And for example, during the recent cold snap or Winter Storm, Storm Fern, 75% of our generation here in Kentucky came from our existing coal units,” he said.
Fotouhi said coal generators had reduced mercury emissions 91% from the original rule’s implementation in 2012. Mercury is a neurotoxin, and children are particularly vulnerable to exposure. He also said the 2012 rule had reduced emissions of nickel, arsenic, and lead by 81%, due to industry compliance.
While many coal plant owners made upgrades to comply with the 2012 rule, it did lead to the retirement of older, less efficient facilities, including some in Kentucky.
It and President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan were assailed by state leaders at the time as a “war on coal” that was costing jobs and tax revenues in the state’s coal-producing regions.
The perception of a full-bore regulatory assault on coal was thought to be a factor in President Donald Trump’s lopsided victories in Kentucky in 2016 and 2024. Trump also carried the state overwhelmingly in 2020, even though he lost to former Vice President Joe Biden.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned the Clean Power Plan, its emissions reduction goals were achieved and ultimately exceeded by the power sector.
Hundreds of other coal plants nationwide have shuttered, less due to federal regulations than from competition from cheaper, abundant natural gas due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Coal has fallen below 20% of U.S. electricity generation from its peak nearly 20 years ago of about 50%. Natural gas is now the dominant fuel, though wind, solar and battery storage are making inroads.
Wind and solar surpassed coal in 2024. Trump campaigned on reviving coal, and he’s taken more steps in the past year to do that than he did in his first term in office.
He’s scrapped the EPA’s endangerment finding that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, pose a risk to human health in addition to warming the climate.
He’s ordered coal plants to stay open in Michigan, Indiana, Colorado and Washington state.
He pushed Congress to repeal many of the tax breaks for clean energy in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Still, solar was the dominant form of electricity added to the grid in 2025, a trend that’s expected to continue through the end of Trump’s current time in office. PPL’s Bellar said the company has no plans currently to build any new coal-burning power plants.
LG&E and KU is a financial supporter of WEKU.
