February 14, 2026 - Regulatory stability, consistent pricing and scalable technology are all factors needed for miners to consider before building new coal plants, industry leaders said at the American Coal Council's Miami Coal Forum.

The Trump administration has announced several regulatory and policy actions aimed at improving the economics of coal-fired power generation, coal mining and carbon-intensive fossil fuels more broadly, such as issuing emergency orders to halt scheduled coal plant retirements and rolling-back carbon emissions rules. Administration officials have also floated the idea of new coal plant construction in the years to come.

But utility companies and miners said they would need a range of conditions to fall into place before considering new coal plant construction, which could still fall short of making projects viable.

Industry leaders agreed Feb. 12 that stability is one of the most important factors as it relates to policies, prices and regulation in considering new coal plant construction.

"A utility doesn't make a two-year decision; a utility makes a 50-year, 30-year decision," Ben Jones, senior director of fuels at electric utility Tennessee Valley Authority, said. "And to do that, we have to have stability and policy and cost and capital and all the things."

Factors like internal company metrics, external demand, long-term forecast and reserve margin changes affect new-build decision making, according to Virginia Farrow, senior portfolio director for coal and oil at NRG, a utility with assets in Canada and the US.

"It is such a huge capital investment for such a long period of time," Farrow said. "I think the right answer is we don't really know."

One challenge to bringing new coal plants online would be a lack of scalable and dependable technology that can generate dispatchable power, Andy Cofas, managing director at Associated Electric Cooperative, said during a panel discussion.

"If we never get to that new technology, that could be the trigger to say you ride the wave we're on now of we need something solid and reliable and it could be more coal," Cofas said.

While the technology is out there and being developed, it is not yet commercialized, according to Steven Winberg, president of engineering at Powerscape Global, an energy technology company. Winberg referenced the American Advanced Coal Technology Initiative that aims to commercialize new mining technology.

The US "has experienced a sustained erosion in coal-based industrial capability," he said. "Let's get this technology developed so that irrespective of what happens with the existing coal fleet ... we're on our way to 21st century coal."