Every morning is filled with anxiety in this hardscrabble town so intertwined with the fortunes of its hulking coal power plant that a drawing of the facility is emblazoned on the community’s police force emblem.

Locals look out their windows to see if there are clouds drifting from its massive smokestacks, indicating the plant is still running. If they don’t see any, they wonder if plant owners have thrown in the towel for good.

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“The Clean Power Plan is not what hurt coal,” said Michael Wara, a professor of energy law at Stanford University. “It is hard to hurt someone more when they were already mortally wounded.”

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“The entire energy economics and energy law community thinks it is a crazy proposal,” Wara said of the subsidy plan. “I have not met anyone who does not have serious problems with it.”