Stop Forcing Costly Coal Plants to Keep Operating

Rescind Unlawful 202(c) Orders Forcing Coal Plants to Remain Operating

To date, five coal-burning facilities in Michigan, Indiana, Colorado, and Washington have suffered from the administration’s unlawful delay of planned facility retirements – and millions of additional Americans now suffer from the mounting financial and health costs of these orders. Americans are already facing a serious affordability crisis, and electricity bills continue to rise; keeping these coal plants online is imposing unnecessary costs on customers, amounting to millions of dollars per day, and preventing lower-cost clean energy from coming online to replace them. I urge the Trump administration and the Department of Energy to: - Rescind the emergency orders issued under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act requiring certain retiring coal plants to remain in operation. - Take all steps necessary to reimburse all plant owners for the costs incurred complying with all past orders, to protect American families; utility customers should not pay the cost for unnecessary and unlawful 202(c) orders. - Allow the states and utilities to pursue their planned retirements and/or transitions as scheduled. - Halt issuance of any further unlawful, subsequent orders forcing retiring fossil plants to remain online. Customers should not be required to pay to keep unnecessary, unreliable, and expensive coal plants operating—especially unmaintained facilities that utilities have been planning to retire for years. State regulators have spent years reviewing and ultimately approving the retirement of these plants to benefit the public interest. States and utilities have ensured that utilities can continue to meet customer demand reliably. Many of those same state regulators and utilities are now challenging these unlawful orders in court. DOE needs to allow the facilities to continue with their planned retirements. In flagrant disregard for the purported justification behind the orders, the DOE has, at Trump’s behest, issued 202c orders to facilities that are physically unable to deliver electricity due to deferred maintenance in advance of retirement, inability to source parts, or decommission already underway. For example, the owners of the Craig coal plant in Colorado were forced to make additional repairs simply to comply with the order because the plant was not capable of operating beyond its planned retirement date. Similarly, the president of the utility which owns one of the coal plants in Indiana stated one of the units “needs to be rebuilt” and that it will take “six months or longer…to operate.” In what world does a broken down coal plant provide any semblance of reliability? Costs are also only one part of the equation; continued operation of these plants perpetuates the longstanding harm these facilities have imposed on the health of nearby communities due to air and water pollution, including emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury. These pollutants have disproportionate health consequences for children, older adults, and people with pre-existing health conditions. Impacted community members experience significant health problems, including respiratory, neurological development, and cardiovascular harm from exposure to these toxins. For these reasons, we demand that the administration and Department of Energy rescind these orders, reimburse the costs, allow these power plants to retire as planned, and issue no subsequent unlawful orders that flagrantly disregard the intended purpose of Section 202(c).