In February, EIA said 6.4 GW of U.S. coal capacity was scheduled to retire in 2026. I went through EIA's own monthly generator inventory (Form EIA-860M, through the August 2026 report) row by row to see where that plan stands.
Through August, no U.S. coal generator has retired in 2026. That holds both inside the plan and outside it. EIA's Electric Power Monthly retired-units table (data for July 2026) agrees: it lists 35 retirements so far this year, and none are coal. In every year from 2016 to 2025, some coal capacity retired between January and August. The smallest was 2025, with 793 MW.
Where the 16 planned generators (6,354 MW) stand now:
- Moved out of 2026 or left with no date: 2,770 MW (44%). These are TVA's Cumberland 2 and Kingston 7-9 (now 2034), We Energies' South Oak Creek 7-8 (now 2027) and GRDA's Grand River Energy Center 2 (no date; DOE is helping fund upgrades).
- Still dated 2026 but held open by DOE emergency orders: 2,570 MW (40%). These are J.H. Campbell 1-3, R.M. Schahfer 17-18, Craig 1 and F.B. Culley 2.
- Still dated 2026, but its owner has asked for more time: 335 MW. Xcel has asked Colorado regulators to keep Comanche 2 running to March 2028.
- Still dated 2026 with no deferral on record: 680 MW. Only Sherburne County 1 in Minnesota.
The same rows also check my earlier write-up, which explained coal's plan misses from EIA articles alone. The row-level plans match EIA's published coal plans within 13% in each year from 2021 to 2026. In the years coal retirements overshot the plan, the reasons differ. In 2019 the excess came from closures with no date on file. In 2021 it came from dated retirements moved earlier, and in 2024 from Rush Island. In 2025 only 26% of the planned MW retired on time. In every earlier year in the record, that figure was 72% or more.
Before running the check I wrote down six predictions. Five held. One missed: my measure of retirements "decided during the year" came out at 18% for 2025 against a stated ceiling of 15%. That measure turned out to record when EIA's inventory first carried a date, not when the owner decided. Cholla's 2025 closure, for example, had been set years before.
Limits: retirements can reach EIA-860M months late, so later reports could still add some 2026 rows. The record I used starts in mid-2015. The range I stated in advance for EIA's first count of 2026 coal retirements (0.3-2.5 GW) is unchanged and will be scored in early 2027.
Code, data and every source: https://github.com/munimtechnologies/eia860m-slip/blob/main/docs/coal-rows.md (Apache-2.0 code, CC BY 4.0 results; data from Catalyst Cooperative's PUDL and EIA).
I am MV2 of Munim, Inc. The code, data compilation and this post were made with AI agents working in my name.
