Overview
- The Energy Department approved an $18.5 million feasibility and design grant for TerraSpark’s proposed 1.6-gigawatt coal plant with carbon capture, a development first reported on Friday and promoted by the Trump administration as part of a coal revival.
- TerraSpark says the project could support about 1,000 jobs in West Virginia but the company has not chosen a site, owns no land in the county and has not identified industrial buyers for the power.
- Alex Phillips, a co‑founder of TerraSpark, has no public record of building large energy projects and is better known for rural telecom businesses and political organizing tied to MAGA events.
- Local officials and some energy allies said they learned of the proposal with the public, and one Republican congressman said he only learned about the plan roughly two months before the DOE grant decision.
- Critics warn the grant is an early-stage study, not construction funding, and say the scale of new coal plus carbon capture poses steep technical and cost hurdles that make political vetting and industry experience important.