Energy Department wants to develop smaller coal plants

"The Trump administration is set to ask companies to help the government develop small-scale coal-fired power plants," according to a top Energy Department official, Amy Harder reports for Axios. Steve Winberg, assistant secretary for fossil energy in the department, told Harder at a major energy conference in Houston that the "smaller coal plants would be able to better complement an electricity grid that has growing amounts of intermittent wind and solar power and be able to include other technology that captures carbon emissions."

The funding would be competitive and would require coal companies to share the costs, another department official told Harder. Coal has been declining for years, mostly because of cheap natural gas, but Winberg said he hopes coal can survive if these smaller power plants do well.