DOE extends order to delay retiring Consumers’ Michigan coal plant

The U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday issued a second emergency order directing the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and Consumers Energy to continue running a coal-fired power plant in Michigan that had been set to retire in May.

DOE issued an initial emergency order to prevent Consumers from retiring its majority-owned 1,420-MW J.H. Campbell power plant in West Olive, Michigan, on May 31. That order expired on Aug. 21. The new order runs to Nov. 19.

DOE’s initial emergency order and its contention that MISO faces an emergency is being challenged in court by Michigan’s attorney general and a coalition of groups, led by the Sierra Club and Earthjustice.

“Midwestern families and businesses should not be forced by the U.S. Department of Energy to pay millions of dollars in higher electricity bills for an old coal plant that is demonstrably not needed for reliability and much more expensive than sensible alternatives,” Howard Learner, CEO and executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said Thursday in a statement. “There is no emergency need for this coal plant as the Michigan Public Service Commission has concluded based on the facts, especially as electricity demand drops from the hot summer to the fall.”

Under the Federal Power Act, DOE can order power plants to operate for 90 days during emergencies. Under an order that runs until Aug. 28, DOE also directed Constellation Energy to keep operating two 380-MW units at its Eddystone power plant near Philadelphia.

DOE contends that emergency conditions exist in MISO, according to its latest order. Reflecting the emergency, the power plant produced 664,000 MWh in June, running at a 61% capacity factor, DOE said. The power plant produced 7.9 million MWh in 2024, according to Consumers’ annual report filed on Feb. 11 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In what DOE said was another sign of emergency conditions, MISO issued “dozens” of alerts to manage grid reliability in its central region between June 11 and Aug. 18.

Further, MISO’s resource adequacy problems are not limited to the summer, DOE said.

“The evidence indicates that there is also a potential longer term resource adequacy emergency in MISO,” DOE said. “The emergency conditions resulting from increasing demand and accelerated retirements of generation facilities supporting the issuance of [the initial Campbell order] will continue in the near term and are also likely to continue in subsequent years.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday determined that the costs of keeping the Campbell plant online will be shared across MISO’s northern and central regions.

Consumers reported to the SEC last month that it spent $29 million in the first 38 days of the DOE order to keep the Campbell plant online.

Industry observers expect the Trump administration will prevent significant fossil-fueled power plants from retiring. Depending on how many power plants DOE orders to keep running under its Federal Power Act section 202(c) authority, the cost to ratepayers could grow to $5.9 billion in 2028, according to a report from Grid Strategies released on Aug. 14.