Trump's emergency orders pushing coal power are "illegal" as well as dumb
A World War II-era policy is stopping old coal plants from closing.
At one time, the US electricity grid ran mostly on coal.
But coal-fired power plants have steadily been decommissioned. Power producers found the plants were too expensive to operate and carried risks tied to toxic air pollution, waste, and climate-warming emissions.
Then President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year with a fresh zeal to revive the coal industry. His Department of Energy invoked emergency powers to force utilities to keep old plants operating.
