In an administration where corruption is the rule, one of the more bald-faced payoffs to big fossil donors are these “emergency” orders to keep obsolete, expensive and polluting coal plants open, a direct transfer of ratepayer’s money to oligarch’s pockets. The kicker, they don’t even run to provide that vaunted “baseload” power.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy ordered the owners of 10 generating units at six power plants — five of them coal-fired — to run the units past their retirement dates to address what DOE says is a reliability emergency across most of the country’s grid.
So far, the emergency orders’ impact on power production has been mixed. One power plant hasn’t operated at all under its 202(c) order, one ran for a two-week stretch, three are producing less power than they did at the same time in previous years and one is generating electricity roughly in line with its previous output, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
Combined, five of the power plants produced 1.5 million MWh in the first quarter of this year under the DOE’s orders, down 65% from the 4.3 million MWh they generated in the same period last year. One of the six plants, in Pennsylvania, hasn’t reported its output to the EIA this year. It generated just 27,000 MWh in the first quarter last year.
Never before in the Energy Department’s nearly 50-year history has it ordered generating units to continue producing power after their scheduled retirement dates. To do so, it has used a string of 90-day emergency orders issued under the Federal Power Act’s section 202(c). DOE has reissued those orders for all the units before the initial orders expired.
“What we’ve seen over the past year is the Trump administration twisting the use of this emergency authority beyond all recognition,” said Greg Wannier, staff attorney for the Sierra Club, one of the environmental groups that intervened in the case, in an availability with reporters after the oral arguments.
In justifying the orders, Wright often has cited the increased demand on the power system due to the proliferation of new data centers powering artificial intelligence. He has said keeping the fossil fuel plants open was necessary not only to mitigate blackouts but to “maintain affordable, reliable, and secure electricity.”
But electricity rates rose 5 percent nationwide in 2025, and keeping coal plants open is adding to consumer bills. The operator of the Campbell plant, Consumers Energy, which had made closure of the plant part of a strategy to save customers $600 million through 2040, appeared before the court to stress that any order should not undermine its ability to recover its additional costs from Midwestern consumers. The lawyer for Consumers Energy said the net costs of Wright’s orders had been $43 million so far, but those fighting the order—including the state of Michigan—have estimated much higher costs.
Consumers Energy, which operates the J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan, has reported $180 million in expenses associated with running the facility since last May. In Washington, the Centralia plant, which is operated by the power company TransAlta, reported nearly $20 million in costs during the first three months of the emergency order, even though it has not burned any coal since its directive was issued in December.
In a statement, Consumers Energy said, “We are focused on complying with the federal orders.”
In an affidavit submitted to a federal energy regulator, a TransAlta executive outlined what it would take to restart the plant: 75,000 gallons of diesel, plus $200,000 worth of electricity before it could begin generating any of its own energy. Even if the plant never runs again, it would cost an estimated $7 million to dispose of its 98,000-ton pile of coal. TransAlta said its facility remains available but has not been directed to operate.