April 21, 2026 12:08 PM UTC

"We Are Going to Flood the State of Colorado With Coal Again"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Readers of Colorado Pols are well aware that certain Republican lawmakers are the political gift that keeps on taking from the GOP. The leaders of this stupid clubhouse, Colorado Springs Representatives Scott “Rock” Bottoms and Ken “Dildo” DeGraaf, delight in making absurd comments that absolutely cause more harm than good for Colorado Republicans.

That trend continued this morning on the House Floor during discussion of HB26-1226 (“Manage Emissions from Electric Generating Units”), legislation intended to reduce harmful emissions from electric generation facilities Colorado. Bottoms strode to the “well” to condemn solar and wind power and make a strange declaration about the future of coal.

BOTTOMS: The good thing is that President Trump, through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and through another Executive Order has now made sure that we can put coal electric generating plants back in Colorado. I know that they’ve been cut all the way to the ground — not only did we do away with them, but we cut them to the ground. Why? Because they’re scared that somebody that likes coal may actually get in office…

…We’re going to flood the State of Colorado with coal again. This is the primary and best source of energy. Solar and wind are shell games; they are shams upon the people of Colorado. They do not generate electricity in a way that has any kind of positive net. You take the government subsidation away and they would go away the next day, because they cannot support themselves. This is all extremely factual and can be found anywhere.

Extremely factual, indeed.

Bottoms is correct that President Trump is doing what he can to put his finger on the scale for coal power. But as The Colorado Sun reported in late March, owners and operators of outdated coal-powered plants DON’T WANT TO KEEP THEM OPEN:

The Trump administration’s Department of Energy on Monday extended its emergency order keeping coal-burning Craig Unit 1 open against the wishes of its owners as well as Colorado regulators and environmental advocates. [Pols emphasis]

The plant, scheduled for a Dec. 31 permanent shutdown by Tri-State Generation and Transmission long before the first Trump emergency order, will now stay open and available to bolster Western power supplies through at least June, the order says…

…Tri-State Generation, a power-supplying co-op that co-owns the northwestern Colorado unit, has said it completed repairs earlier this year and the plant has been available to respond to demand orders from regional power coordinators. But the plant still hadn’t been called on for actual power as of Monday, said Tri-State officials, who are reviewing the new order.

Tri-State and environmental groups have said the federal orders have not offered any information about who will pay to keep Craig 1 operating, which could cost more than $80 million over a year.

As NPR reported in February, Tri-State Generation tried unsuccessfully to petition the Trump administration to allow it to stop lighting money on fire at its coal plant in Craig, Colorado:

In 2016, operators of the complex decided that closing Craig 1, the station’s oldest coal-fired unit, was the most cost-effective option to serve its customers and meet air quality requirements. Then, just a day before the scheduled closure at the end of 2025, the federal government issued an order to keep the plant open and available for 90 days.

Colorado’s attorney general and environmental groups challenged the order in late January. The next day, the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the Platte River Power Authority — co-owners of the power plant — filed a petition asking the U.S. Department of Energy to reconsider.

In the request, Tri-State and Platte River say they’ve built sufficient solar and wind farms, and no longer need Craig 1. By forcing the power plant to stay open, the plant owners say they’ve been forced to buy coal and invest in maintaining the facility, unnecessary expenses that amount to an “uncompensated taking” of their property in violation of the Constitution. [Pols emphasis]

And who is going to be stuck paying the bill to keep this unwanted coal plant running? Tri-State openly admits that the cost will be passed along to ratepayers.

As to the claim from Bottoms that coal is “the best source of energy,” a 2025 report from the financial advisory firm Lazard makes it clear that solar and wind power are clearly more cost-effective than coal:

On an unsubsidized $/MWh basis, renewable energy remains the most cost-competitive form of generation. As such, renewable energy will continue to play a key role in the buildout of new power generation in the U.S. T

This is partly because burning coal for electric generation is incredibly inefficient. As Yale Climate Connections explained in 2023:

Today’s fleet of coal-burning power plants in the U.S. has an average operating efficiency of 32%, meaning 68% of the energy in coal is lost in the process of converting it to electricity.

Conversely:

With renewables, no fuel is burned, so there is no energy lost in the conversion of fuel to electricity. Renewables don’t capture 100% of the solar energy, wind, or water that moves past them, but there’s little pollution or resource use. Once a turbine or a solar panel captures energy, that entire quantity of energy is available for use.

You don’t even really need to know all of this, however. If it still made financial sense to pursue coal power, companies like Tri-State and Platte River would be embracing Trump’s coal demands. But it doesn’t, and they are not.