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The Trump administration has ordered another aging, costly coal plant to keep operating past its long-planned retirement date — this time in Centralia, Washington.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy issued an emergency order requiring Unit 2 of the TransAlta Centralia Generation power plant to keep running for the next 90 days. (Unit 1 was shut down in 2020.) Power plant owner TransAlta had planned to shutter Unit 2 this month, as part of an agreement in place since 2011 with Washington state. State law prohibits utilities from burning coal starting next year.
The DOE order claims that “an emergency exists” in the Western U.S. grid that justifies this action under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. President Donald Trump’s DOE has used the same emergency power this year to force the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan and the Eddystone oil- and gas-burning plant in Pennsylvania to keep running via successive 90-day orders. It may issue more must-run orders to coal plants set to close at the end of the year in Colorado and Indiana.
State regulators and environmental and consumer advocacy groups have filed legal challenges to the DOE’s must-run order for J.H. Campbell in Michigan, saying the agency is misusing its authority as part of a broader political agenda to protect the coal industry. The complaints highlight that emergency claims from Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former gas industry executive who denies that climate change is a crisis, are unsubstantiated — and that utilities and regulators have found the plant can be safely closed.
Forcing some of the country’s oldest and most expensive coal plants to keep running is driving up costs for utility customers already struggling with rising electricity bills.
Consumers Energy, the utility that owns the J.H. Campbell plant, reported that it spent at least $80 million to keep the plant running from May to the end of September, or roughly $615,000 per day.
About 27 gigawatts’ worth of coal-fired capacity is scheduled to retire in the U.S. from now until the end of 2028, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data, equal to roughly 15% of the country’s current coal fleet. Should the Trump administration force all of those facilities to stay online, as well as other fossil-fueled power plants slated to shutter, it could cost U.S. utility customers between $3 billion and nearly $6 billion per year by the end of 2028, an August analysis from consultancy Grid Strategies found.
It would also stymie progress in decarbonizing the power grid. Coal retirements have been crucial to the emissions reductions the U.S. has managed in recent years.
“As families struggle with rising electricity bills, the Trump Administration is delivering coal for Christmas and forcing households to pay for it,” Earthjustice attorney Michael Lenoff, who is leading litigation against the DOE on its J.H. Campbell plant stay-open order, said in a Wednesday statement after the Centralia must-run order was issued. “Coal is not only the most polluting and carbon-intensive source of electricity, it’s expensive. And these aging coal plants are increasingly unreliable.”
DOE’s must-run order for TransAlta’s Unit 2 may also complicate plans to convert the power plant to run on fossil gas. Less than a week ago, TransAlta announced an agreement with utility Puget Sound Energy to convert Unit 2 to gas by late 2028 at a cost of about $600 million, which the firm said would help meet regional grid needs while reducing carbon emissions.
Pacific Northwest utilities in September released a report expressing concerns about longer-running grid reliability challenges in the region. Tuesday’s DOE order cited a separate analysis from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) indicating “elevated risk during periods of extreme weather” for the Northwest region as justification for keeping the Centralia plant running.
But critics have pointed out that DOE’s Section 202(c) authority to force power plants to keep running for up to 90 days at a time is meant to deal with immediate emergencies, rather than serve as a tool to override the long-term planning and analysis of utilities, state regulators, regional grid operators, and reliability coordinators.
And if you’re aiming to boost reliability, aging coal plants are not your best bet. They are more likely to experience unplanned outages than modern power plants, according to a recent analysis of NERC data conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund.
“There is no ‘energy emergency’ in the Pacific Northwest that would justify forcing the continued operation of an old and dirty coal plant,” Ben Avery, the Sierra Club’s Washington state director, said in a statement on Wednesday. “All the evidence shows that when Centralia shuts down, customers’ costs will decrease and air quality will improve. Instead of lowering bills or protecting families from harmful pollution, the Trump administration is abusing emergency powers to prop up fossil fuels at any cost.”
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