DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA — The Department of Energy invoked Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act in May 2025 to issue emergency orders requiring coal-fired power plants to remain in operation, beginning with the JH Campbell plant in Michigan. The orders, which were not requested by plant owners, marked a new use of the provision by President Donald Trump's administration to prevent planned closures of coal plants across the country.

The administration issued additional emergency orders for the Eddystone plant in Pennsylvania, the Centralia plant in Washington, the RM Schahfer and Culley plants in Indiana, and Craig Station in Colorado. Energy Secretary Chris Wright 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. "Americans don't like that. President Trump doesn't like it."

Section 202(c) allows the government to intervene to meet short-term electricity needs when existing regulations fail to do so. President Franklin D. Roosevelt first used the provision in 1941 to meet electricity demand in the Southeastern United States before U.S. entry into World War II, and the government issued 23 orders under the section during the 1940s. Almost no orders were issued in the decades that followed. During the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, the DOE used the provision 12 times in response to requests from utilities or grid operators, typically to allow plants to exceed emissions limits briefly.

Consumers Energy had planned to close the JH Campbell plant and replace it with a combination of a natural gas plant and existing renewable energy resources. In a February regulatory filing, Consumers Energy reported spending $290 million to operate the plant since the first emergency order, with $155 million offset by grid operator revenue, leaving $135 million to be covered by customers. In 2024, the plant emitted 8.9 million tons of carbon dioxide, ranking 19th among U.S. power plants, according to federal Energy Information Administration data.

Alexandra Klass, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who served as deputy general counsel at the DOE during the Biden administration, called the orders unlawful. "It's just illegal," Klass said. "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," she added.

Michelle Solomon, manager in the electricity program at Energy Innovation, said the orders are interfering with utility planning. "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," Solomon said.

Cases challenging the emergency orders are pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Coal-fired power plants have been steadily decommissioned as power producers found older facilities expensive to operate and associated with toxic air pollution, waste, and climate-warming emissions. Coal accounted for at least 50 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2005 but fell to 15 percent in 2024 before rising to 17 percent in 2025. Of the nation's 169,417 megawatts of coal-fired generating capacity, 40,784 megawatts have retirement dates listed by the Energy Information Administration.