BALTIMORE — The Trump administration is pushing to reopen a coal plant in western Maryland as a part of his $700 million plan to reopen coal plants across the country.
"They were closing them and you had brownouts all over the place, but you don't have that anymore, do you notice? Under four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the radical left Democrats in Congress, not a single permit was approved for a new coal mining project. But in over one year of our administration, we've already approved 76 permits for clean, beautiful coal," Trump said.
Trump's coal plan includes restarting a Western Maryland plant
Republicans in Maryland's Senate welcome the investment, saying it will put downward pressure on energy costs.
But Delegate Lorig Charkoudian, a Montgomery County Democrat, argues the plant will be neither clean nor a source of cheap energy.
"This is just sort of another level of subsidy and the reason that they're getting subsidized is because the economics aren't there, for coal, and so it's really time to move on. If we look just straight up at economics, these plants were closed because they were uneconomical," Charkoudian said.
Charkoudian does want investment and energy production at the location, just not coal.
"It's an industrial property. It has all of the transmission. It's a great place to invest in energy infrastructure. We should just be investing in the infrastructure of the future. There is some battery storage there. We should be growing the battery storage there. We should be investing in the energy of the future instead of going back 50 years," Charkoudian said.
AES, the owner of the power plant, said in a statement that it welcomes the support from the Department of Energy.
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