Federal judge strikes down DOE orders to keep Michigan power plant open past retirement date

The Department of Energy overstepped by ordering an aging coal-fired power plant in Michigan to continue operating past its retirement date, Kate Yoder writes for Grist. The ruling, which came on Sept. 11, represents one of the first successful legal challenges to President Trump’s “national energy emergency” plan, which instructs federal agencies to use all emergency powers available to increase fossil fuel energy production. 

The Trump Administration has forced seven fossil fuel plants to stay in operation, “despite the pollution they cause and the enormous costs of keeping them online,” Kate Yoder writes for Grist. Days before Michigan’s J.H Campbell plant was about to close, the DOE invoked short-term emergency powers to keep the plant running, arguing that the threat of outages and data centers’ need for more power constituted an emergency.

 “But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected that argument, with Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard writing that the emergency statute ‘is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop,’” Grist reports.