With help from the Trump administration, the Grand River Dam Authority shelved its plan to stop generating electricity at its last remaining coal unit in Chouteau and will instead spend millions on upgrades to keep it running for the next several years.
The state-backed utility was among 12 coal-generating plants securing grants from President Donald Trump’s $500 million plan to keep the domestic coal industry afloat. Trump made the announcement June 4 from the White House.
The federal Energy Department will spend $28.5 million on the upgrades at the Grand River Energy Center Unit 2, with GRDA financing another $48 million. It will modernize the coal yard and material-handling infrastructure, upgrade water and air delivery systems and improve the unit’s high-pressure boiler.
Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co.’s Sooner plant in Red Rock received a $22.5 million grant from the Energy Department. It will update technology used to operate and monitor the power plant. The two coal units there date to 1979 and 1980.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said 17 coal plants that were scheduled to close last year instead will keep generating electricity because of actions by the Trump administration. The Energy Department is ordering coal plants to keep running under an emergency powers section of the Federal Power Act.
The Trump administration is using the money for the coal plant upgrades under the Defense Production Act, which dates to the Korean War. It allows the president to influence domestic industry to provide essential goods and materials for national defense.
Critics said using the Defense Production Act to prop up aging coal-generating plants doesn’t make sense when it's cheaper to develop new natural gas and renewable generation. Although the Trump administration has eased environmental enforcement on harmful coal plant emissions, there remains a risk that future administrations won’t be as lax.
“Trump is pouring tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into Oklahoma monopoly utility and shareholder pockets to prop up toxic, expensive coal technology that is on the way out,” said Ty Gorman with the Sierra Club. “Meanwhile, clean energy like solar, storage and efficiency are by far the most affordable, reliable and healthy options for customers, and they don't send people to the hospital or lead to premature deaths like the coal plants do.”
Planned retirement
Extending the life of GRDA’s last coal unit is a reversal of the authority’s plan to decommission it this year. Unit 2 dates to 1986. GRDA retired another coal unit there in 2020 because of environmental regulations.
GRDA is spending $475 million on a new natural gas unit at the power plant. When its board approved the project, officials said the natural gas unit would replace the coal-generating capacity being retired at Unit 2.
“There’s a lot of risk in that operation and it continues to be uninsurable today,” Robert Ladd, GRDA’s vice president of generation operations, said in August 2023, according to The Frontier. “It’s exposed to the highest degree of regulatory uncertainty, lacks the operational flexibility that’s needed for the market, has the highest expense across all of our GRDA-owned fleet, and also carries the most risk, operational and financial.”
GRDA officials didn’t respond to detailed questions about the retirement reversal. Its largest industrial customer is Google’s data center in Pryor. Since 2020, Google has advocated for carbon-free energy sources for its data centers.
“Extending the life of Unit 2 represents the most cost-effective solution for GRDA, as compared to new-build generation alternatives,” Dan Sullivan, GRDA president and chief executive officer, said Monday in a written statement. “This grant allows us to leverage existing infrastructure to continue to deliver affordable and reliable power to GRDA customers in the future.”
GRDA officials did not respond to follow-up questions.
GRDA’s board of directors discussed the Trump administration’s coal plans at a special meeting in September. The authority also filed for a modification of its state air quality permit for the Grand River Energy Center to keep the coal unit running.
“This project originally proposed the decommissioning of GRDA’s Unit 2 to coincide with the operation of Unit 4,” the application said. “However, given significant and sustained increases in local and regional electricity demand forecasts, the decommissioning of Unit 2 must be reconsidered.”
GRDA said it was pursuing the extended life of the coal unit under Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order, which the president signed in January 2025.
“This extension will serve as a critical reliability bridge while new generation assets are permitted, procured and constructed to meet Oklahoma’s growing electricity demand, preserving reliability while transitioning responsibly,” GRDA said in the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality permit application.
OG&E said the federal Energy Department grant will cover some of the upgrades for its coal project at the Sooner plant, reducing the costs to ratepayers. OG&E will put in $35.2 million of the $57.7 million modernization project.
“This grant project will strengthen grid reliability and improve operational efficiency by replacing the plant’s aging internal control systems while delivering customer savings through lower maintenance costs,” Christi Woodworth, OG&E’s chief communications officer and chief of staff, said in a written statement.
The utility earlier said it faces an uncertain future for its coal generation because of environmental regulations over the interstate transport of nitrogen oxides emissions. In 2023, it estimated compliance costs across its coal fleet ranging from $2.4 billion to $2.8 billion.
“OG&E has been considering options to cut emissions at its generating units, including buying emission allowances, installing selective catalytic reduction systems, switching coal units to gas, or retiring and replacing capacity,” the utility’s parent company said in its most recent quarterly financial report.
Woodworth said the Sooner plant modernization project will not directly address emissions regulations. The utility will seek recovery of its costs through a rate case.
“The grant funding will offset a large portion of the cost of the new project, reducing the amount that will be included in OG&E rates and delivering customer savings,” Woodworth said in her statement.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
