This article was originally published at Independent Women on June 10, 2026, and republished with permission from the author.
The Department of Energy announced on June 4th that it would invest up to $850 million to build, restart, and modernize U.S. coal plants. The funds will build two new coal-fired plants, one in Anchorage and the other in Mt. Storm, West Virginia, totaling 2.85 gigawatts (GW). They will be the first new commercial U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013.
The package splits three ways: $350 million under DOE’s “Restoring Reliability” initiative for the two new builds, a 510 megawatt (MW) retrofit in Puerto Rico, and recommissioning of the 205 MW AES Warrior Run plant in Cumberland, Maryland; $425 million in Defense Production Act Title III funding across twelve fleet modernization projects, with the largest awards to East Kentucky Power Cooperative ($90.6 million) and TVA’s Cumberland Fossil Plant ($46.3 million); and $75 million for the West Gateway Terminal in Oakland, a marine export terminal aimed at Indo-Pacific markets…