Key Takeaways
In 2008, President Obama told the nation that his policies would make electricity prices skyrocket.
That, and a follow-up regulatory environment from the Biden administration, made it come to fruition by changing the U.S. electrical system, crippling its ability to maintain sufficient reliable capacity to meet rising demand and new consumers, resulting in higher prices.
Intermittent wind and solar power, which were preferred by the Obama and Biden administrations, have hidden system costs requiring backup power when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, and added transmission costs to get the power from remote wind and solar sites to demand centers, increasing electricity prices.
Trump’s EPA is working to fix the problems by rescinding the Obama-era “endangerment finding” and the regulations that it fostered, but it will take time to correct the damage that the Obama and Biden administrations have done to the U.S. electrical system.
Democrats want to blame President Trump for the soaring electricity prices, but President Obama told the nation that his policies would make those prices skyrocket; it just took a decade or so to come to fruition. Obama sufficiently changed the U.S. electrical system, crippling its ability to have enough reliable capacity to deal with demand spikes and new consumers, resulting in increasing prices. In 2008, then-President Obama said, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” While he did not get a nationwide cap-and-trade system instituted, he and then-President Biden enacted policies that effectively had the same outcome — spiraling electricity prices. In fact, when his cap-and-trade proposal failed in Congress, President Obama said there were “other ways to skin a cat,” foreshadowing his regulatory initiatives.
Under President Obama, the nation saw a stream of regulatory actions that led to a series of coal-fired plant retirements, plants that were the backbone of the U.S. generating fleet when Obama became president. At the end of 2008, the United States had 313 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity, which has shrunk to 169 gigawatts today, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s a 46% drop in reliable, baseload capacity. In 2008, coal generated 48% of U.S. electricity, while today, it generates 16%, frequently backing up unreliable and heavily subsidized solar and wind plants that get priority in the dispatch order.
Coal plants helped immensely during the Arctic storm in January. In fact, at the peak of the storm, coal plants provided as much as 40% of the power in the Midwest’s MISO grid, 24% in the eastern PJM Interconnection, and 18% in Texas, with most of the rest coming from natural gas and nuclear, not the politically preferred wind and solar power under the Obama and Biden presidencies.
Probably the most notable, far-reaching, and foundational policy of the Obama era was its “endangerment finding,” which currently serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation. Obama’s 2009 “endangerment finding” determined that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. Using the endangerment finding and certain sections of the Clean Air Act, the Obama administration imposed onerous regulations on coal-fired power plants under the New Source Performance Standards and the Clean Power Plan, requiring a 32% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants relative to 2005 levels by 2030.
The Obama-Biden regulatory environment against coal continued with the Biden-Harris administration. In 2023-2024, the Biden-Harris Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tightened rules limiting emissions of mercury and other pollutants from coal-fired power plants, updating standards imposed during the Obama administration. The new EPA rule strengthened mercury emission limits for coal-fired power plants by 70% and further regulated other pollutants, such as lead, nickel, and arsenic. Those changes to the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards were announced by the Biden-Harris EPA after tightening the “good neighbor” rule, which put tougher limits on emissions from power plants, factories, and other industrial facilities that cross state boundaries.
In 2024, the Biden-Harris EPA finalized its “power plant rule,” which forced existing coal and new natural gas plants to use carbon capture to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or shut down. Coal plants and new gas-fired plants would need to start capturing 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2032 with carbon capture and sequestration technology that is not commercially viable. The rule would force fossil fuel plants that are not retrofitted with carbon capture systems to exit the grid by January 2039. The regulation was meant to rid the U.S. generating system of all its coal plants and stop the construction of new gas-fired plants. These fuels are the backbone of the U.S. electric system, with the two fuels combined supplying 60% of all generation. The Biden-Harris administration promised a future regulation of existing gas plants, but the 2024 election gave it no time to proceed.
As a result of these onerous regulations, the last large coal-fired power plant built in the United States was the 932-megawatt Sandy Creek Energy Station in Texas, which came online in 2013. Coal-fired retirements began in earnest as more Obama and Biden regulations piled on, such as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, Coal Combustion and Residuals, and Cross-State Air Pollution Rules. Coal plants also found it hard to compete with heavily subsidized wind and solar facilities and low-cost natural gas plants. Even more coal plants are expected to retire through the end of 2029, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The U.S. generating system contrasts sharply with the coal plants in China’s fleet, fueling its manufacturing sector. In 2024, coal generated 58% of China’s electricity, and coal is expected to continue its dominance of China’s power generation sector for decades to come as the new coal plants being built last 40, 50, or even 60 years. New and reactivated coal power project proposals in China surged to 161 gigawatts in 2025, a record high, and the country commissioned 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity that year. China has more coal-generating capacity in its electric generating fleet than the United States has in its entire generating fleet, consisting of all technologies.
Analysis
Unfortunately, President Obama was right when he said that the policies he implemented would cause electricity prices to skyrocket. One only has to look at the European generating system to see that wind and solar power are not the inexpensive generating technologies that Obama and Biden promised. European electricity prices have soared above those in the United States, as the continent adds massive amounts of wind and solar power, and European industries are fleeing to locales with more affordable energy.
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