CRAIG, Colo. — The Cooper family knows how to work heavy machinery. The kids could run a hay baler by their early teens, and two of the three ran monster-sized drills at the coal mines along with their dad.
But learning to maneuver the shiny red drill they use to tap into underground heat feels different. It's a critical part of the new family business, High Altitude Geothermal, which installs geothermal heat pumps that use the Earth's constant temperature to heat and cool buildings. At stake is not just their livelihood but a century-long family legacy of producing energy in Moffat County.
Like many families here, the Coopers have worked in coal for generations — and in oil before that. That's ending for Matt Cooper and his son Matthew as one of three coal mines in the area closes in a statewide shift to cleaner energy.
“People have to start looking beyond coal," said Matt Cooper. "And that can be a multitude of things. Our economy has been so focused on coal and coal-fired power plants. And we need the diversity.”
Many countries and about half of U.S. states are moving away from coal, citing environmental impacts and high costs. Burning coal emits carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet.
President Donald Trump has boosted coal as part of his agenda to promote fossil fuels. He's trying to save a declining industry with executive orders, large sales of coal from public lands, regulatory relief and offers of hundreds of millions of dollars to restore coal plants.
That's created uncertainty in places like Craig. As some families like the Coopers plan for the next stage of their careers, others hold out hope Trump will save their plants, mines and high-paying jobs.
Matt and Matthew Cooper work at the Colowyo Mine near Meeker, though active mining has ended and site cleanup begins in January.
The mine employs about 130 workers and supplies Craig Generating Station, a 1,400-megawatt coal-fired plant. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is planning to close Craig's Unit 1 by year's end for economic reasons and to meet legal requirements for reducing emissions. The other two units will close in 2028.
Xcel Energy owns coal-fired Hayden Station, about 30 minutes away. It said it doesn't plan to change retirement dates for Hayden, though it's extending another coal unit in Pueblo in part due to increased demand for electricity.
The Craig and Hayden plants together employ about 200 people.
Craig residents have always been entrepreneurial and that spirit will get them through this transition, said Kirstie McPherson, board president for the Craig Chamber of Commerce. Still, she said, just about everybody here is connected to coal.
“You have a whole community who has always been told you are an energy town, you’re a coal town," she said. “When that starts going away, beyond just the individuals that are having the identity crisis, you have an entire culture, an entire community that is also having that same crisis.”
Phasing out coal
Coal has been central to Colorado’s economy since before statehood, but it's generally the most expensive energy on today's grid, said Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.
“We are not going to let this administration drag us backwards into an overreliance on expensive fossil fuels,” Polis said in a statement.
Nationwide, coal power was 28% more expensive in 2024 than it was in 2021, costing consumers $6.2 billion more, according to a June analysis from Energy Innovation. The nonpartisan think tank cited significant increases to run aging plants as well as inflation.
Colorado’s six remaining coal-fired power plants are scheduled to close or convert to natural gas, which emits about half the carbon dioxide as coal, by 2031. The state is rapidly adding solar and wind that's cheaper and cleaner than legacy coal plants. Renewable energy provides more than 40% of Colorado’s power now and will pass 70% by the end of the decade, according to statewide utility plans.
Nationwide, wind and solar growth has remained strong, producing more electricity than coal in 2025, as of the latest data in October, according to energy think tank Ember.
But some states want to increase or at least maintain coal production. That includes top coal state Wyoming, where the Wyoming Energy Authority said Trump is breathing welcome new life into its coal and mining industry.
Planning for the future
The Coopers have gone all-in on geothermal.
“Maybe we’ll never go back to coal," Matt Cooper said. "We haven’t (gone) back to oil and gas, so we might just be geothermal people for quite some time, maybe generations, and then eventually something else will come along.”
While the Coopers were learning to use their drill in October, Wade Gerber was in downtown Craig distilling grain neutral spirits — used to make gin and vodka — on a day off from the Craig Station power plant. Gerber stepped over his corgis, Ali and Boss, and onto a stepladder to peer into a massive stainless steel pot where he was heating wheat and barley.
Gerber's spent three decades in coal. When closure plans were announced four years ago, he, his wife Tenniel and their friend McPherson brainstormed business ideas.
“With my background in plumbing and electrical from the plant it’s like, oh yeah, I can handle that part of it,” Gerber said about distilling. “This is the easy part.”
He used Tri-State's education subsidies for classes in distilling, while other co-workers learned to fix vehicles or repair guns to find new careers. While some plan to leave town, Gerber is opening Bad Alibi Distillery. McPherson and Tenniel Gerber are opening a cocktail bar next door.
Everyone in town hopes Trump will step in to extend the plant's life, Gerber said. Meanwhile, they're trying to define a new future for Craig in a nerve-wracking time.
“For me, my products can go elsewhere. I don’t necessarily have to sell it in Craig, there’s that avenue. For someone relying on Craig, it's even scarier,” he said.
Questioning the coal rollback
Tammy Villard owns a gift shop, Moffat Mercantile, with her husband. After the coal closures were announced, they opened a commercial print shop too, seeing it as a practical choice for when so many high-paying jobs go away.
Villard, who spent a decade at Colowyo as administrative staff, said she doesn't understand how the state can throw the switch to turn off coal and still have reliable electricity. She wants the state to slow down.
Villard describes herself as a moderate Republican. She said political swings at the federal level — from the green energy push in the last administration to doubling down on fossil fuels in this one — aren't helpful.
“The pendulum has to come back to the middle," she said, “and we are so far out to either side that I don’t know how we get back to that middle.”
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