"TransAlta’s Centralia power plant was meant to close at month’s end and be converted to burn gas by 2028. DOE’s must-run order complicates that plan."
"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."
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