On Tuesday, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced a familiar directive: citing an alleged energy emergency, a coal plant set to close would be compelled to stay operational. This instance affected one of the three units at Craig Station in Colorado, slated to retire at year’s end. The other two units were planned to cease operations in 2028.
The stated justification for this order is an emergency stemming from a shortfall in generating capacity. “The reliable supply of power from the coal plant is essential for keeping the region’s electric grid stable,” the Department of Energy said in a statement. Yet the Colorado Sun reports that Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission had already assessed the effects of a possible shutdown and concluded, “Craig Unit 1 is not required for reliability or resource adequacy purposes.”
The directive does not compel the plant to generate power immediately; rather it must remain on standby should a production gap appear. As the Colorado Sun article points out, running the plant could violate Colorado laws that control air pollution and cap greenhouse gas emissions. The expense of keeping the unit available will likely be passed to local ratepayers, who had already adapted to the planned closure.
The DOE’s invocation of emergency authority rests on the Federal Power Act, which permits ordering the temporary connection of generation or infrastructure when the United States is at war or when “an emergency exists by reason of a sudden increase in the demand for electric energy, or a shortage of electric energy.” It’s unclear that the DOE’s justification — that “we expect demand to go up in the future” — meets that statutory definition of an emergency. Nor is it obvious how relying on coal-fired units aligns with other constraints on the use of these emergency powers:
