How many electric plants closed under biden
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Executive summary
There is no single, authoritative count in the provided reporting that says “X electric plants closed under Biden”; available sources offer capacity-retirement figures, policy actions and partisan claims but not a consolidated plant-count for the Biden presidency. Reporting from fact-checkers and energy analysts shows plant retirements occurred for economic and regulatory reasons, while critics and allies disagree about whether administration rules caused those retirements [1] [2] [3].
1. What the numbers actually show: capacity retired, not a plant tally
Federal and investigative reporting and fact-checks referenced here report retirements measured in gigawatts of generating capacity rather than a straight count of facilities; for example, Analysis Group data cited by WisconsinWatch notes 5.1 gigawatts of electric generating capacity retired in the first half of 2024 (down from 9.2 GW in the first half of 2023) while 20.2 GW was added in that same period — figures framed in capacity, not number-of-plants terms [1].
2. Why a precise plant count is hard to produce from available reporting
The documents assembled for this analysis — government releases, news stories and advocacy statements — emphasize rules, capacity shifts and projects started or canceled, but none provides a definitive, cumulative list of individual plants closed during Biden’s term; sources repeatedly discuss “retirements” or “shuttered” plants in aggregate or by capacity and highlight regulatory proposals (EPA rules) rather than compiling a plant-by-plant closure ledger [4] [2] [3].
3. Competing narratives: policy-driven shutdowns versus market economics
Republican lawmakers and industry groups have framed Biden-era EPA rules as a deliberate plan to “shut down” baseload plants, prompting Congressional resolutions and political statements that treat regulation as tantamount to forced closures [5] [6] [7]. Journalistic reporting and fact-checkers push back: independent analysts attribute most retirements to economics — cheaper alternatives and market forces — and fact-checks have concluded the administration is not “shutting down power plants nationally” as some political claims asserted [1] [8].
4. Regulatory context and policy churn that affected plant futures
The Biden administration’s 2024 power-plant rules and related Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were cited by opponents as accelerating retirements because of costly compliance, and the Trump-era EPA later proposed repeals — demonstrating how regulatory uncertainty has become a major factor in companies’ decisions to mothball or cancel projects [4] [3]. Reporting also records administration efforts to seed clean-energy investment in former coal communities and to expand renewable capacity, highlighting that policy tools were deployed both to tighten emissions and to finance replacements [9] [10].
5. Bottom line and limits of the record
Given the nature of the available sources, the answer that can be supported is this: reporting provides figures for gigawatts retired (for example, 5.1 GW in H1 2024) and documents regulatory actions and partisan claims, but does not supply a comprehensive, sourced count of how many individual electric plants closed during President Biden’s tenure; therefore a definitive number of “plants closed under Biden” cannot be drawn from the supplied materials alone [1] [4] [3]. Alternative analyses that do enumerate plants would require access to EIA or FERC plant-level retirement databases or a compiled, peer-reviewed accounting of retirements across the full term — sources not present in the set provided here [11].