Wyoming, Basin Electric Take Step Toward First New Coal Plant in over a Decade

While Dry Forks, WY is the only coal plant where the economics works for coal in the US, it is unlikely this support scales nationally [1] [2]. Also, it is unknown if a coal generation EPA permit would be issued after political winds shift by the time this new generator comes online. For comparison, Meta has contracted for 600MW of solar in Texas (Swenson Ranch, Stonewall County), which will be online in less than two years (2027). Longroad Energy announced last month that construction has started on a 400MW solar PV plant in Yoakum County, named 1000 Mile Solar. The project will be up and running next year (2026) [3][4].

(and while coal and solar capacity factors and dispatchability are different, consider uptake rate of solar and battery storage, along with their cost decline curves; one cannot build coal generation as cheap and fast as battery backed solar [5])

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569451

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569317

[3] https://cleantechnica.com/2025/10/27/texas-adds-more-solar-p...

[4] https://en.newsroom.engie.com/news/engie-and-meta-strengthen...

[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.g...