WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal court on Friday ruled that the Energy Department exceeded its authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright had said the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell plant was needed to ensure reliable electricity in the region and used emergency powers to keep it operating. Environmental groups and three
states — Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota — went to court to try to overturn orders keeping the plant online.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the states and the groups, saying there was no real emergency under the law.
The section of the Federal Power Act that allows emergency orders “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop," Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
By reversing the Campbell plant's “long and carefully planned retirement ... the results are disruptive," Pillard wrote. There was “no ‘emergency’ within the meaning” of the statute, she added.
The Michigan case is one several legal disputes that have emerged across the country as the Trump administration uses emergency powers to force a half-dozen coal-fired plants from closing. The orders are raising ratepayer bills, critics say, and adding air and water pollution that could otherwise have been avoided.
Keeping the Michigan plant open cost at least $135 million in 2025 alone, officials said.
Ted Kelly, U.S. clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the court ruling rejected the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to force “unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online.”
The Energy Department's “unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” Kelly said Friday. The Campbell plant and other aging sites are “incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health and break down frequently,” he said.
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
