The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the Trump administration’s order to keep the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in Michigan operating. The decision could impact other orders that have been issued to keep U.S. coal-fired power plants operating past their scheduled retirement dates.
The court on September 11 said the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) does not have the authority to prevent the retirement of power plants, ruling the DOE’s justification for its emergency orders is unlawful. The court said keeping a power station online absent an imminent need to do so does not qualify as justification.
The section of the Federal Power Act—Section 202(c)—that allows emergency orders “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop,” Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. Pillard wrote that by reversing the Campbell plant’s “long and carefully planned retirement … the results are disruptive.” The judge added that there was “no ‘emergency’ within the meaning” of the statute.
The Michigan case is one of several legal challenges to the Trump administration’s use of emergency orders to force coal-fired power plants to remain online. Critics have said the orders are raising electricity prices, and adding air and water pollution that could otherwise have been avoided.
“The court rebuked the Trump administration’s abuse of emergency powers,” said Michael Lenoff, Earthjustice attorney. Earthjustice was among several groups, including the Sierra Club and Urban Core Collective, challenging what they called the DOE’s illegal application of Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. Earthjustice is representing public interest groups challenging the DOE orders, which have been issued to six U.S. power plants in five states.
“The DOE needs to stay in its lane and use its emergency powers only in actual emergencies,” said Lenoff. “Preventing the market-driven retirements of coal plants to advance a coal-friendly agenda is not a proper use of emergency powers. We will continue to challenge unlawful orders if DOE persists in issuing them.”
The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Adequate Power Generation Capacity
Petitioners in the Campbell case have pointed to grid operator data that suggests regions served by the Michigan plant, and by other stations ordered to remain online, have adequate power generation capacity to serve load projections through at least May 2027. The groups said that data undercuts the premise of DOE’s asserted emergency.
DOE in supporting its orders has said its foresees electricity shortfalls due to increased replacement generation from renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, that are weather dependent. The petitioners, though, have argued that the initial announced retirement dates for the coal-fired power plants involved were based on more baseload power generation (such as from gas-fired power plants) entering service, even before accounting for new generation from solar, wind, and energy storage.
Derrell Slaughter, Michigan policy director, Climate & Energy, at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), said, “Michiganders shouldn’t have been saddled with artificially high energy bills or forced to deal with toxic air pollution over a fabricated ‘emergency.’ The Campbell coal plant is out of date, costs more to operate than other electricity generation options, and is one of the worst polluters in the state. Today’s federal court ruling has correctly rejected the Trump administration’s illegal efforts to force the Campbell plant to continue to operate.”
Court Rules DOE Overreached
The court order said the DOE cannot invoke Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act unless it establishes a genuine emergency, which has been defined in the Code of Federal Regulations “as an unexpected inadequate supply of electric energy which may result from the unexpected outage or breakdown of facilities for the generation, transmission or distribution of electric power.” The D.C. court said that the federal government may not override what it called well-established long-term planning processes to force power plants to continue to operate. The court said such decisions, including management of supply and demand of power on a day-to-day basis, belong to utilities and grid operators. The order states that “the Department’s (DOE’s) reading of ’emergency’ invites frequent federal interventions that are unsupported by the statute and threaten the stability of the energy market.” Those challenging the orders said there is no evidence that continued operation of the Campbell plant, along with other plants in Colorado, Indiana, Florida, and Washington state, is imminently needed.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for families across the Midwest who are tired of paying to keep this old, expensive, and dirty power plant online,” said Sierra Club Chief Appellate Counsel Sanjay Narayan. “Instead of working to lower costs and clean up our air and water, the Trump administration has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels—at public expense. This reckless agenda will not succeed. We will continue to hold the Department of Energy accountable to the law, and ensure that the J.H. Campbell plant finally retires as it was scheduled to, and we will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country.”
Multiple Emergency Orders
The DOE in May 2025, citing Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, calling for the 1.5-GW J.H. Campbell power plant, operated by Consumers Energy, to remain operational, just days before it was due to retire at the end of that month. The emergency order, which is valid for 90 days, has since been re-issued six times for the Campbell plant by the DOE. The for the last year exceeded $248 million in June 2026, according to the company’s SEC filings, a cost of $642,000 per day. The operators have said that at no point over the past year was the generation from the power plant needed to supply the grid.
Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Clean Air Task Force, and Environmental Defense Fund represented a large public interest coalition that petitioned the court to set aside DOE’s order forcing the J.H. Campbell coal plant to operate. The states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois, also petitioned the court.
Unit 1 at the Craig Station in Colorado, whose operator Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association received a DOE order to remain online in December of last year, provides an example of the costs to keep an older plant operating past its scheduled retirement. Tri-State earlier this year said that, on average over the past 10 years, it costs about $13 million a year to operate and maintain the Craig facility, not including the cost of buying coal.
Xcel Energy, which owns 10% of Craig Unit 1, recently said it cost the utility $4 million to keep the plant online during the first six months of 2026, though the unit produced little energy. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that from January to June 2026, Craig Unit 1 only produced power in April; the agency said Units 2 and 3 at Craig produced more than 20 times as much electricity as Unit 1 during those six months.
This story will be updated.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
