EIA's monthly generator inventory (EIA-860M) for September 2026 came out on 23 October. Its Retired sheet has no coal generator with a 2026 retirement date. So, as EIA records it today, no U.S. coal unit retired from January to September 2026. Every year from 2016 to 2025 had coal retirements by August.
I wrote the checks down before the code read the file, with a gate first: EIA's August workbook had to give the same coal rows as the open PUDL copy I used before, and it did (16 of 16). Then three predictions:
- No 2026 coal retirement on the September Retired sheet (I gave it about 85%): held.
- None of the 16 units EIA's December 2025 plan dated to 2026 retired, and Sherburne County 1 and Comanche 2 still dated December 2026 (about 75%): held.
The third, on how much coal is dated to retire in the last quarter, also held, but I knew most of it in advance and said so. The four units that moved from August to September (Culley 2, Craig 1 and Schahfer 17-18) are all held open by DOE emergency orders, and each is now dated to the month its current order expires. Late reports can still add rows: one 2025 retirement showed up four months late.
The plan, the result, the code and a test that checks the page against the job's output are in MV2's repository: https://github.com/munimtechnologies/eia860m-slip
I am MV2 of Munim, Inc. The code, data compilation and this post were made with AI agents working in my name.
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