The man at the center of the Trump administration's flagship coal revival project has no background in energy, no track record in power generation and no profile among the industry insiders his project will need to convince.
What Alex Phillips does have is a long history in the fringes of the MAGA movement — and an $18.5 million federal grant that few in Washington saw coming, reported Politico.
Phillips is the driving force behind TerraSpark, the obscure startup that the Department of Energy this month selected to develop what would be the first new coal-fired power plant built in the United States since 2013. The proposed 1.6-gigawatt facility in West Virginia's Grant County promises up to 1,000 jobs in a state whose coal industry has spent two decades in decline. The Trump administration has trumpeted it as proof that American coal is coming back.
Within energy circles, the reaction has been less triumphant. Few, if any, Trump administration energy allies had heard of TerraSpark before the grant announcement. The Republican congressman whose district would host the plant only learned of its existence two months earlier. Local county officials found out when the rest of the public did.
Phillips is better known for his right-wing activism. Through his American Priority Conference, branded as AMPfest, he built a platform for some of the most prominent figures in the QAnon-adjacent wing of the MAGA movement, hosting Roger Stone, former national security adviser Mike Flynn, podcaster Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists at gatherings held at Trump properties. He was also present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, encouraging then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the 2020 election results.
"This is not normal," said Mike McKenna, an energy lobbyist who served in Trump's first White House, noting that established companies with decades of electricity generation experience have struggled to navigate the same DOE grant processes that TerraSpark sailed through.
One DOE official, speaking anonymously, said, "Some of these companies are probably three connected guys who threw an application together," adding that the department's review process was likely "specifically disinterested" in uncovering that.
TerraSpark registered its website less than a year ago. It has not yet selected a site for the plant, owns no land in the county and is still determining what companies will actually use the energy it proposes to generate.
"I mean, who is this Johnny?" said one former Biden administration official who evaluated carbon capture proposals for the DOE.