Why coal is getting a second wind in Maryland

Cumberland Mayor Ray Morriss would love to fire up the old coal plant down the road, so he was pleased to hear this month that President Donald Trump plans to put millions into rebooting the shuttered facility.

“I’ll take AES Warrior Run coming back online however they do it,” Morriss said.

The Republican has long blamed the environmental policies of Democrats for the Western Maryland plant’s closure, but he said a recent turn of fortunes for coal operators shows “reality might be setting in.”

The potential revival of Warrior Run, south of Cumberland, comes as Maryland’s last operating coal plant could get another spark of its own. On the same day Trump pledged $78 million to recommission Warrior Run, regional grid operator PJM Interconnection asked federal regulators to extend operations of Brandon Shores Power Plant outside Baltimore to 2031. That’s six years after its original retirement date — and the long-term consequences for utility bills remain to be seen.

Trump’s efforts to buoy the industry come as the regional power grid has seen demand grow for the first time in decades, a problem the Republican administration argues could ease with the help of “clean, beautiful coal.” Meanwhile, high electricity prices have created a potentially lucrative situation for power generation companies such as AES, the owner of Warrior Run.

The rise of artificial intelligence and growing power demands from data centers have driven up electricity prices and rewritten the needs of the mid-Atlantic power grid. That shift has reawakened an appetite on the part of power companies and grid operators for fossil fuels such as coal — an energy source that has been in precipitous decline in the United States for close to two decades.

This shift, even more than Trump’s pro-coal policies, has triggered a renewed interest in coal nationally, according to market analyst Andrew Blumenfeld.

Blumenfeld said he doesn’t think data centers will spur a turnaround for the coal industry. But they could stave off its demise, he said.

Since 2010, hundreds of coal-fired power plants have been retired nationwide. Seven have closed in Maryland. Among them, the Charles P. Crane Generating Station shuttered in 2018 under a state settlement over emissions of toxic gases. The massive Morgantown Generating Station, in Charles County, decommissioned its coal boilers in 2022. Warrior Run followed two years later.

Coal fired-power plants once accounted for more than half of the power generated in Maryland, but that output has fallen to just 6% since 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Just a few years ago, Blumenfeld predicted the number of coal-fired power plants nationwide would fall off a cliff after 2032, the Biden-era deadline for a near-prohibition on power plant carbon emissions. But Trump repealed that policy and Blumenfeld now expects some coal plants could keep running into the 2040s.

Meanwhile, Maryland has turned to other sources of power. Reliance on cheap natural gas has surged, while solar farms and wind turbines supply more energy to the grid than the state’s remaining coal-fired boilers at Brandon Shores.

So the recent proposals to open or extend the life of coal plants mystify some.

“I never would have believed this,” said Paul Pinsky, a longtime state legislator and former head of the Maryland Energy Administration. “Five years ago, it never would have entered my mind.”

Pinsky spent a career crafting Maryland laws to curb hazardous emissions from fossil fuel plants and was the lead sponsor on the 2022 law establishing the state’s aggressive net zero-emissions target. Maryland aims to zero out its carbon emissions by 2045, but the state has fallen behind on that goal.

Now Pinsky thinks an interim target to reduce emissions 60% by 2031 may be out of reach.

PJM’s request to federal regulators cites a need for new transmission lines to bolster the grid once Brandon Shores is gone. But these transmission upgrades wouldn’t be necessary if it weren’t for new stress from data centers, said David Lapp, a state-appointed watchdog with the Maryland Office of the People’s Counsel.

A roughly $1.5 billion power line project that PJM commissioned to ensure grid reliability in place of Brandon Shores is taking longer than expected. The grid operator says it needs that line and others to be finished before the coal plant can retire.

Regulators had previously approved extensions for Brandon Shores and a neighboring oil-fired plant to 2029. Lapp said the long-term implications of the extension to 2031 aren’t clear for ratepayers.

Replacing Brandon Shores could take a while.

In filings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, PJM transmission planner Mark Sims hinted that delayed infrastructure upgrades and shifting grid demands could make Brandon Shores’ coal power necessary even beyond 2031.

The Brandon Shores extension needs approval by Trump appointees on FERC. But, even if it keeps running, the plant burns much less coal than it used to.

Warrior Run, meanwhile, is small by the standards of many coal plants.

The plant’s operator, Arlington, Virginia-based AES, asked federal regulators in December not to cancel its connections to the power grid — a sign the company wanted to bring the plant back online.

A summary of the Department of Energy’s new appropriation says some of the new investment in Warrior Run will go toward capturing greenhouse gas emissions off the plant — an expensive and unproven solution. Gov. Wes Moore’s office said this month that AES has indicated a longer-term interest in converting its plant into a battery to support the grid.

Even if Trump’s support is enough to bring the plant back online, it’s not clear how long operators aim to keep burning coal. An AES spokesperson did not directly address questions about the company’s plans.