Share of utility-scale installed capacity, by source
This interactive map and sortable table show every utility-scale coal power plant in the United States, all 438 plants of 1 MW or larger in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s EIA-860 (2025 early release) whose primary energy source is coal, color-coded by coal rank: bituminous (217), subbituminous (178), waste coal (16), lignite (15), refined coal (10) and coal synthesis gas (2). Plants are shown across all statuses: active (206), standby (6), in development (0) and decommissioned (226). Together, the 206 active coal plants mapped here have a combined capacity of about 182,400 MW (~182 GW). (EIA lists no coal plants in development, so essentially none are being built in the US, and the fleet now has roughly as many retired plants as operating ones.) Source: U.S. EIA Form EIA-860 (2025 early release), Schedules 2 (Plant) and 3 (Generator), with every plant’s status and capacity then reviewed against the Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory (EIA-860M), June 2026; ranks per EIA energy-source codes.
Capacity is what is installed; generation is what actually ran. Coal holds 13.79% of US utility-scale generating capacity and produced 16.62% of the electricity in 2025, an implied capacity factor of 46.1% on a nameplate basis. Nuclear is the extreme case in one direction, at 7.32% of capacity for 17.70% of generation; solar is the extreme in the other, at 12.50% for 6.67%.
Sources, basis and how the totals reconcile
Sources. Generation is EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 1.1, Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors), annual 2025 row. EIA marks 2025 and 2026 values as preliminary; 2024 and earlier are final, so these shares may be revised. Capacity is this site’s own datasets from EIA-860 (2025 early release), reconciled against EIA-860M (June 2026).
Basis. Both charts cover utility-scale plants of 1 MW or larger, generating sources only. Battery storage is excluded from the capacity chart because it shifts power rather than producing it, and estimated small-scale rooftop solar (93,148 GWh in 2025) is excluded from the generation chart so the two stay comparable.
Totals. The generation slices sum to 4,434,820 GWh. EIA’s published net total is 4,429,502 GWh, being that figure less 5,320 GWh of net pumped-storage hydro, which EIA reports as a negative because pumping consumes more electricity than generation returns, and a further 2 GWh that EIA attributes to independent rounding. Pumped storage is left out of the pie because a negative value cannot be drawn as a slice. Percentages use largest-remainder rounding at two decimal places so each chart adds to 100.00%.
Category notes. EIA reports wind, biomass and geothermal as one 526,246 GWh category; the split here carries a one-unit adjustment on wind so the three reconcile to that published total. Biomass covers wood and wood waste, black liquor, landfill gas, sludge waste, agricultural byproducts and biogenic municipal solid waste. Other fossil gas is blast furnace gas, gaseous propane and other manufactured waste gases; Other is hydrogen, non-biogenic municipal solid waste, batteries, purchased steam, sulfur and tire-derived fuel. One definitional seam is worth knowing: EIA-860 files gaseous propane under petroleum products, while Table 1.1 files it under other fossil gas, so the same fuel sits in the Petroleum slice on the capacity chart and the Other fossil gas slice on the generation chart. Only one 2.3 MW plant is affected.
Share of utility-scale electricity generated, by source
EIA preliminary data
Coal plants were built as baseload but now follow demand. Units ramp through the morning, hold through the afternoon peak and back down overnight, though the swing is gentler than gas because large steam units are slow and costly to cycle.
Method: this is a modeled profile, not metered data. The 24-hour mean of 46.1% is the implied annual capacity factor, calculated as 2025 generation from EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 1.1 divided by the nameplate capacity of the active fleet on this page multiplied by 8,760 hours. EIA’s own published capacity factors use net summer capacity as the denominator and therefore run higher. The hourly shape applies the documented operating behaviour of this technology to that mean and is indicative rather than measured; metered hourly output would come from the EIA Hourly Electric Grid Monitor, which is not yet wired into this page.
| # | Plant | Type | State | Nearest city | Operator | Status | Capacity | Online |
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Plants are grouped by the coal they burn. Bituminous (Appalachia/Illinois Basin) and subbituminous (Wyoming’s Powder River Basin) dominate; lignite is a softer, lower-energy coal burned near the mine in Texas and North Dakota; small amounts of waste coal and refined coal round out the fleet.
Pulverized coal is burned in a boiler to raise high-pressure steam that spins a steam turbine. Older units run subcritical steam; newer, more efficient ones run supercritical or ultrasupercritical. A handful add carbon capture.
US coal capacity has fallen sharply since about 2010 as plants retire in favor of gas and renewables. This page shows roughly as many decommissioned plants as active ones, and EIA lists no new coal plants in development.
Any utility-scale plant (1 MW or larger) in EIA-860 (2025 early release) with at least one generator whose primary energy source is a coal fuel: bituminous (BIT), subbituminous (SUB), lignite (LIG), waste coal (WC), refined coal (RC) or coal-derived synthesis gas (SGC). That yields 438 plants. Filtering on the primary fuel excludes gas plants that merely co-fire coal.
Coal is graded by carbon and energy content. Anthracite is hardest and highest-energy (rare in power generation today); bituminous is the workhorse of the eastern US; subbituminous (mostly Wyoming Powder River Basin) is lower-sulfur and widely shipped; lignite is the softest and lowest-energy, burned close to the mine in Texas and North Dakota.
US coal capacity has dropped sharply since around 2010 as cheaper natural gas, renewables and environmental rules pushed plants into retirement. This dataset shows 226 decommissioned plants versus 206 active; the two are now roughly one-to-one.
No. EIA-860’s proposed-generator schedule lists no new coal plants, so the “In development” count is zero. New US generation today is overwhelmingly gas, solar, wind and storage.
They describe steam conditions and efficiency: subcritical is the older, lower-efficiency design; supercritical and ultrasupercritical run hotter, higher-pressure steam for more output per ton of coal. A few plants (e.g., W. A. Parish in Texas) add carbon-capture equipment. Where EIA reports these, they appear in the tile profiles.
It is the EIA-860 2025 early release (Schedules 2 and 3). EIA notes the early release is not fully edited and may withhold a few plants pending validation. Active+standby coal capacity here totals roughly 182 GW, consistent with EIA’s published figures.
No map on the website is shrinking faster. Decommissioned coal plants now roughly equal the number still operating, and essentially none are in development. The entire trajectory points one way. The survivors concentrate in the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, the Upper Midwest and the Plains, near the mines and barge routes that historically fed them. Most are large baseload steam plants built between the 1950s and 1980s, now running fewer hours each year as cheaper gas and renewables displace them.
Yet because the remaining plants are big, coal still represents about 181 GW of active capacity. That is second only to natural gas among thermal sources, and far more than nuclear. That tension, a fleet that is simultaneously enormous and in decline, defines US coal today. Each retirement removes a large block of dispatchable capacity that the grid must replace with gas, renewables plus storage, or, increasingly, by keeping other plants on standby. Explore that replacement dynamic in our look at the US power fleet in 2026.