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At
one time, the U.S.
electricity grid ran
mostly on coal.
But coal-fired power
plants have steadily
been decommissioned.
Power producers found
the plants were too
expensive to operate
and carried risks tied
to toxic air
pollution, waste and
climate-warming
emissions.
Then President Donald
Trump returned to the
White House last year
with a fresh zeal to
revive the coal
industry. His
Department of Energy
invoked emergency
powers to force
utilities to keep old
plants operating.
Not only is this bad
policy, it’s also a
misuse of a law
designed for wartime,
according to legal
scholars and analysts.
If allowed to stand,
this poses problems
for utilities, grid
operators and
regulators who plan
for decades-long
timeframes, only to be
overruled by
short-term political
imperatives that favor
certain industries.
“It's just illegal,”
said Alexandra Klass,
a professor at
University of Michigan
Michigan Law School,
about the emergency
orders. She served in
the Biden
administration as a
deputy general counsel
at the Department of
Energy.
Environmental
advocates and state
officials have
challenged the orders
in court, with cases underway in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of
Columbia Circuit.
I’m focusing on the
emergency orders
because I don’t think
the public grasps how
much these actions
undermine the
principles of utility
planning and
regulation, with
harmful consequences
for consumer bills and
the climate.
While the Trump
administration props
up coal, it aims to
slow the deployment of
clean alternatives
with actions such as a
stop-work order on
offshore wind and
slow-walking permits
to build onshore wind.
Klass co-authored a new essay with Dave Owen of UC Law San
Francisco in the
Michigan Law Review
Online that examines
the history and
current use of
presidential emergency
powers on energy.
The Department of
Energy under President
Donald Trump is
invoking Section
202(c) of the Federal
Power Act, a provision
first used by
President Franklin D.
Roosevelt in 1941 to
meet electricity
demand in the
Southeastern United
States in the run-up
to U.S. entry into
World War II. The idea
was that the
government needed the
ability to step in to
meet short-term needs
when existing
regulations failed to
do so.
The government issued
23 orders under
Section 202(c) during
the 1940s and almost
none in the decades
that followed.
In the first Trump
administration and the
Biden administration,
the Department of
Energy used the power
12 times in response
to requests from
utilities or grid
operators, usually for
permission to operate
plants briefly in
excess of emissions
limits.
Since returning to
office in 2025, Trump
has used this power
differently, seemingly
to benefit coal
producers by
preventing coal plants
from closing. The key
difference is that
this latest wave of
orders, starting in
May 2025 with the JH
Campbell plant in
Michigan, was not
sought by plant
owners.
“What the
administration is
doing now is using
these 202(c) orders to
basically override all
of the long-term
resource adequacy and
grid planning that
states, regional
transmission
organizations and
utilities do,” Klass
said. “And this is now
coming in saying, ‘We
don't care what any of
you experts and
planners have to say.
We want to save the
coal industry, and
we’re going to use
this emergency
authority that’s not
designed for long-term
resource planning.’”
Consumers Energy, the
utility that operates
JH Campbell, had
planned to close the
plant and replace it
with a less-expensive
combination of a
natural gas plant and
renewables that
already were online.
Think of this in terms
of the car you drive.
You bought a new car
and then the
government says you
need to keep your old
one and continue
driving it, even if
it’s spewing black
smoke and costs more
to run than your new
one.
The JH Campbell plant,
opened in 1960, has a
summer generating
capacity of 1,331
megawatts. In 2024, it
emitted 8.9 million
tons of carbon
dioxide, ranking 19th
among U.S. power
plants, based on an
analysis of federal
Energy Information
Administration data.
It got its fuel last
year from the
country’s two largest
coal mines by
production, North
Antelope Rochelle Mine
and Black Thunder,
according to
regulatory filings.
Both are based in
Wyoming and they are
owned by Peabody
Energy and Core
Natural Resources,
respectively.
James Grech, Peabody’s
CEO, is also the chair
of the Department of
Energy’s National Coal
Council. Jimmy Brock,
Core’s CEO, is the
vice chair. The Trump
administration
reconstituted the
council last year
after it had lapsed
under the Biden
administration. It was
founded during the
Reagan administration
and advises the secretary of energy on policy,
technology and
markets.
I reached out to
Peabody and Core and
did not receive an
immediate response.
Since ordering JH
Campbell to remain
open, the Trump
administration has issued orders for five other plants:
Eddystone in
Pennsylvania,
Centralia in
Washington, RM
Schahfer and Culley in
Indiana and Craig
Station in Colorado.
All run on coal except
for Eddystone which
runs on natural gas
and oil.
And, the
administration may
just be getting
started.
“I think as part of
the national energy
emergency which
President Trump has
declared we’ve got to
keep every plant
open,” said Interior
Secretary Doug Burgum
last month in an interview with Bloomberg News. “And if
there have been units
at a coal plant that
have been shut down,
we need to bring those
back on.”
For context, the
country has 169,417
megawatts of
coal-fired power
plants.
Of that total, 40,784
megawatts have
retirement dates
listed by the EIA.
More than half of that
total is set to shut
down before 2029 and
would be caught up in
a policy barring the
closure of any coal
plant on Trump’s
watch.
While the
administration can
slow the decline,
coal’s long-term
retreat is
near-inevitable. As
recently as 2005, the
country generated at
least half of its
electricity from
coal-fired power
plants. The share
plummeted to a low of
15 percent in 2024,
then rebounded
slightly to 17 percent
in 2025.
For coal power to make
a sustained comeback
in this country,
developers would need
to start building new
plants. The best
possibility right now
may be the Terra
Energy Center in
Alaska, a proposal to
build a 1,250-megawatt
coal-fired power plant
that would be the
first of its kind in
the United States
since 2013. But this
kind of project is
speculative, and it’s
not yet clear that it will find the right
combination of
financing and reliable
coal supply.
Energy Secretary Chris
Wright had said the
emergency orders are
necessary to keep
electricity reliable
and affordable.
“The states that have
rushed to close their
coal plants have also
had rapidly escalating
electricity prices,”
he said in a Jan. 19 appearance on Fox Business.
“Americans don't like
that. President Trump
doesn't like it.”
His comment leaves a
lot to unpack for an
energy analyst. But
rather than go into
the reasons
electricity prices
have risen, which is
something Marianne Lavelle and I covered in- depth for ICN
last month, I’ll
just note that the
administration’s
policy is making power
more expensive.
In a February
regulatory filing,
Consumers Energy
reported that it had
spent $290 million to
operate the plant
since the first
emergency order. Of
this total, $155
million was offset by
revenue from the grid
operator, leaving $135
million to be covered
by the utility’s
customers.
“It's definitely
interfering with the
ability of utilities
to make sure that
they’re able to supply
the lowest cost, most
reliable energy to
their customers, as
well as states’
abilities to plan
their own generation,”
said Michelle Solomon,
a manager in the
electricity program at
the think tank Energy
Innovation.
If the courts don’t
rein in Trump’s use of
202(c), then there is
little recourse.
Congress could seek to
modify the law on
emergency powers, but
that seems far from
likely.
If we want a system in
which experts make
decisions based on the
public interest and
economics, then
leaders will need to
spend the post-Trump
years making rules
that aren’t so easy to
abuse.
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