Court Voids DoE Order to Keep Michigan Coal Plant Open — SkimNews
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- A DC appeals court vacated the DoE's emergency order to keep Michigan's J.H. Campbell coal plant open, ruling there was no 'emergency' and the DoE exceeded its authority in issuing the order.
- The J.H. Campbell plant was scheduled to retire May 17, 2025, but the emergency directive forced it to remain open for 468 days, costing ratepayers more than $259 million while providing no power.
- The lawsuit was brought by Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois alongside nine public interest groups — including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, and Earth Justice — and the court delivered a full victory vacating the order as null and void.
- The DoE has issued similar 'emergency orders' for six other coal plants plus one oil-and-gas plant across six states, with cumulative ratepayer waste across all seven plants reaching $547 million (not counting separate $625 million and $700 million grants to the industry).
- EDF Lead Counsel Ted Kelly said the DoE should recognize this decision eliminates its legal basis for arguing that any of the other renewals are lawful, since they rest on the same factual and legal arguments.
- Coal's share of US electricity generation has collapsed from roughly half in the early 2000s to about 17% today — the context that makes the DoE's reliability claims so weak.
Why it matters: Ratepayers across six states have already been billed $547 million to keep unneeded fossil plants idle, with Michigan alone footing $259 million of that cost. Because the court's reasoning applies uniformly to every DoE emergency order, the six remaining plants could be retired without further litigation if the DoE accepts the ruling's logic.
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