A federal appeals court has ruled that there was no energy emergency to justify a Trump administration emergency order for a coal power plant in Michigan to keep operating past its planned retirement date in 2025. The decision may determine how much power the federal government has over the state’s electric grid planning efforts and whether coal power — a significant source of pollution and perennial foe for environmentalists — continues its decline.
The panel of judges for the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) “exceeded its statutory authority” by invoking the 1920 Federal Power Act to force the power company Consumers Energy to run the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant in West Olive, Michigan.
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The power plant was scheduled to go offline on May 31, 2025. A 90-day emergency order issued by the DOE prevented the plant’s operator Consumers Energy from shutting it down, and the DOE has issued a new order every 90 days, most recently on Aug. 14.
Boosting coal power has been a core part of the Trump administration’s energy policy. This year, the DOE has allocated over $1 billion to upgrade existing power plants, build two new ones and construct a coal export terminal in the San Francisco Bay.
In the Trump administration’s push to expand coal, gas and nuclear power’s footprint on the grid while limiting renewable energy, the emergency orders for power plants to stay open are among the most controversial actions.
Proponents of the policy cite rising electricity demand and the role power plants can play during extreme weather events. The administration’s critics point to health impacts from pollution, hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to consumers and what they view as federal overreach into grid management questions traditionally handled at the regional and state level.
What does the decision mean?
The D.C. circuit ruling is the “first domino in a pathway to addressing this policy,” said Ted Kelly, lead counsel at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which was one of the challengers in the case. Other advocacy groups also challenged the order keeping the Campbell plant running, alongside the states of Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota.
However, in the immediate term, the ruling does not change anything. The decision comes in response to a challenge to the initial 90-day order, not any of the subsequent renewals to emergency orders for the Campbell plant nor any of the other coal plants affected by similar orders.
The DOE has also ordered coal plants in Colorado, Florida, Indiana and Washington to stay open past their planned retirement date. A power plant in Pennsylvania that runs on gas and oil has also been ordered to stay open. In total, seven power plants have been affected by emergency orders to stay operational, and each has had its 90-day order renewed.
The court’s decision found that this is not what the Federal Power Act is meant for.
READ MORE: Why running coal plants beyond planned closures is costing hundreds of millions
“States, as the regulators of electricity generation, are largely responsible for meeting the core policy goal of achieving ‘resource adequacy,’” the judges wrote in the decision. The court interpreted the law as intended for “short-term crises, such as blackouts caused by war or extreme weather events, not as a substitute for the states’ long-term reliability planning.”
Despite its limited immediate effect, James Coleman, a professor of environmental and energy law at the University of Minnesota, told Straight Arrow that the decision marks “a very important precedent in limiting the use” of emergency orders.
There is already litigation involving the six other power plants under emergency order to continue operating, Kelly told Straight Arrow. The Environmental Defense Fund is directly involved in four.
Those cases — and any new ones challenging emergency orders — are likely to end up at the D.C. Court of Appeals, where petitioners can now invoke this new precedent.
How is the Department of Energy responding?
But the case might not be over yet. The DOE has the opportunity to appeal the decision for a ruling from the full panel of D.C. circuit judges, or request that the U.S. Supreme Court hears the case.
“It’s not like an open-and-shut case either way,” Coleman said. He noted that no administration has attempted to use the Federal Power Act in this way, and the judges faced a “difficult interpretive decision” regarding what time horizon can constitute a real emergency.
The DOE did not answer specific questions including whether it will appeal the ruling, or if the judges’ decision will alter its policy. However, the department continued to assert that the emergency order “prevented blackouts and likely saved hundreds of lives,” a DOE spokesperson said, in a statement to Straight Arrow.
The DOE said that during Winter Storm Fern in late January of this year, coal power production increased 25% in the affected region compared with 2025. The Campbell plant produced 650 megawatts of power from Jan. 21 to Feb. 1.
“Rest assured, the Department of Energy will continue to protect and defend energy security for all Americans,” the DOE spokesperson said.
But the view that keeping coal plants open benefits Americans at large is precisely what opponents of the policy are contesting.
“Keeping these plants open has really harmful impacts on the public both in terms of health and on pocketbook impacts,” Kelly said, citing the link between coal power and health issues affecting the heart and lungs.
The policy has also cost Consumers Energy $259 million to keep the Campbell plant running, according to federal filings, which will likely be recovered through customer rates.
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