Trump's forced coal plant extensions thrown out by judge - Ars Technica

Overview

Trump’s forced coal plant extensions thrown out by judge

The Department of Energy declared an “emergency” when none existed.

Details

The use of coal to generate electricity on the US grid has been plunging for nearly two decades, and the first Trump administration was unable to affect the trend. So his second administration has attempted more aggressive interventions to prop up coal use. One of its most direct means of doing so is to order coal plants that were scheduled to close to remain open, even if there is no need for them.

The administration’s justification for these orders is a statute that allows the Department of Energy (DOE) to declare an emergency in the case of wartime or a sudden shortfall in generation. A number of parties, including states where coal plants have been slated to close, have challenged this declaration. And on Friday, in the first of these cases to make its way through the courts, the declaration was judged to be contrary to the statute. While this only affects a single coal plant in Michigan, the reasoning of the decision will apply to every coal plant closure that has been blocked by the DOE.

The decision was issued by a unanimous three-judge panel from the DC Circuit’s Court of Appeals. It focuses on the J. H. Campbell Generating Plant, which was scheduled to close last year but has been kept open by a total of five emergency declarations by the DOE, each limited to 90 days by the Federal Power Act. At issue was section 202(c) of that Act, which allows the DOE to declare emergencies when the US is at war or when “an emergency exists by reason of a sudden increase in the demand for electric energy, or a shortage of electric energy.”

Michigan and a collection of environmental organizations contested whether an emergency existed. They pointed out that the plant was old, inefficient, and highly polluting—the court cited estimates that its pollution would kill 30 people a year. Its closure was first considered years before, but the state utility commission had a process in place to ensure that doing so wouldn’t endanger service. It held hearings, managed appeals in Michigan courts, and evaluated the utility’s plans to bring cheaper and less polluting power sources into service instead.

The closure plan was only approved because it was concluded that it would not lead to any shortfalls. It was also evaluated and approved by MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator that manages a grid that stretches from Louisiana to Minnesota across the Midwest.

The government, in defending its order, offered two items in defense of the existence of an emergency. One was a report that said MISO was simply at risk of having low generating reserves, which are typically deployed during unexpected shortfalls. The court noted that the same report concluded that MISO had “adequate anticipated resources” for “peak load conditions,” and was specific to conditions in 2024. The second one was a slide deck that suggested the grid was at greatest risk of electrical demand approaching the limits of supply in the summer months, something the court concluded was simply a seasonal comparison and not an evaluation of the state of the grid.

In other words, the court found that the DOE could not provide any evidence of a critical supply shortage that would typically be considered an emergency. That left the question of whether the statute required that degree of specificity for the government to act.

The court spends a fair bit of time analyzing the history and structure of the regulation of the US electric grid. With very little in the way of exceptions, this leaves regulation of generating capacity to the states; the federal government only gets involved when it comes to interstate transmission lines. It notes that the same Federal Power Act that’s at issue here, for example, “expressly denies [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] authority to regulate generation facilities directly.”

The court interprets this as an indication that Congress had intended for federal intervention at the level of generation facilities to be rare and only in cases where there was an immediate shortfall that could only be addressed through federal action. And it notes that this is exactly how the authority had been used throughout its history. “Indeterminate assertions of summer electricity shortfalls are not what Congress meant by ’emergency,’” the judges conclude.

Here, in contrast, we had a carefully planned closure that included ensuring a newer generating facility compensated for the plant’s closure. “Permitting DOE to compel generation in a situation that can be resolved through the ordinary resource adequacy planning mechanisms or a request under section 202(b) would render meaningless the constraints on federal power that Congress imposed throughout the Act,” the decision concludes.

As a result, the court voided the DOE’s emergency declaration. Barring an appeal, this means that Michigan can finally continue with its planned shutdown process, relieving the local ratepayers from the costs incurred to maintain the coal plant to a state where it could be brought back online.

Perhaps more significantly, however, is that the same logic will apply to all other cases where the DOE has attempted to force plants to stay open. So, as long as someone is willing to challenge them and the decision doesn’t get overturned on appeal, it’s likely that all the other coal plants the Trump administration has kept open, and possibly its other actions under the same emergency authority, will be reversed. According to the DOE, it has issued over 55 emergency orders in 2026 alone.

(For the curious, that’s more than double the total number issued between 2000 and 2025.)

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Key Takeaways

• Trump’s forced coal plant extensions thrown out by judge

• The Department of Energy declared an “emergency” when none existed

• The use of coal to generate electricity on the US grid has been plunging for nearly two decades, and the first Trump administration was unable to affect the trend

• The administration’s justification for these orders is a statute that allows the Department of Energy (DOE) to declare an emergency in the case of wartime or a sudden shortfall in generation

• The decision was issued by a unanimous three-judge panel from the DC Circuit’s Court of Appeals