Trump Gives Big Coal $700 Million Handout to Build Alaska Coal Plant, Fund Projects Nationwide

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Today, Donald Trump announced plans to give away $700 million in taxpayer grants for aging, expensive, toxic coal plants-including funding to build a new coal plant in Alaska. The grants mark the latest in a string of costly bailouts from the Trump administration for a collapsing industry. The U.S. has not built a new coal plant in more than a decade due to the staggering health costs and brutal economics.

Nearly $200 million in DOE grants will go towards building two new coal-burning power plants in Alaska and West Virginia. Terra Energy Center has proposed a 1.25-gigawatt coal plant in Alaska's pristine Susitna Valley, despite numerous environmental and health concerns, including hazardous emissions and toxic coal ash.

According to Sierra Club's Out of Control dashboard, coal pollution is responsible for 6,500 premature deaths in the U.S. every year-a number that will increase as the Trump administration continues to desperately keep the rapidly declining coal industry on life support. Trump's Department of Energy has illegally extended the life of coal plants, and Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has given coal plants numerous shortcuts and pollution passes and dismantled lifesaving safeguards that protect communities from coal pollution.

Meanwhile, clean energy outperforms coal economically and does not lead to more hospital visits or missed workdays. Yet rather than investing in cheap clean energy, the Trump administration has paid energy companies billions of dollars to cancel renewable energy projects.

In response, Sierra Club Alaska Chapter Director Andrea Feniger issued the following statement:

"The Trump administration is not only threatening our wildlands on multiple fronts, but it's demonstrating a complete disregard for the people of Alaska. Building a new coal plant in Alaska would be yet another egregious move that would harm our environment, as well as Alaskan ratepayers and taxpayers. Coal plants poison our air, water, and wildlife-while accelerating the devastating effects of climate change that are already hurting our communities. We can't afford to keep ignoring cleaner, more affordable energy like solar and wind all so Trump can bail out his buddies in Big Coal."

About the Sierra Club

The Sierra Club is America's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit https://www.sierraclub.org.