Early last year, a top coal lobbyist sent a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright with a dire warning: roughly one-third of the nation’s coal-burning power plants were scheduled to close within five years. The trade group, America’s Power, proposed an unusual remedy: the Energy Department could deploy rarely used emergency powers to force them to stay open longer. Two months later, the Trump administration began doing exactly that.

The letter, dated Mar. 11, 2025, from America’s Power CEO Michelle Bloodworth, reveals some of the earliest known discussions about an extraordinary intervention into the nation’s energy markets. Since May 2025, the Energy Department has repeatedly issued emergency orders to keep nine coal-burning units at six plants operating long past their scheduled retirement dates, citing the need to prevent looming blackouts. The orders have sometimes come over the protests of the plant’s owners and are expected to cost ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The letter was made public through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Environmental Defense Fund. The Trump administration has since taken each of the steps Bloodworth proposed, including invoking a Korean War-era law called the Defense Production Act and using Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. A federal appeals court has already struck down one order, ruling that it overstepped the law.

“The letter shows the really broad extent to which the coal industry is not only influencing but even directing the Trump administration’s actions,” said Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The industry swung for the fences and got everything they asked for.”