Environmental, Client Teams Problem Trump’s Illegal Coal Plant Extensions

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Washington, D.C. — At the moment, seven environmental and client advocacy teams filed rehearing requests after Donald Trump’s Division of Vitality unlawfully invoked Part 202(c) of the Federal Energy Act and compelled two coal energy crops in Indiana to remain on-line after their deliberate retirements. The seven teams embody Sierra Membership, Environmental Legislation and Coverage Middle, and Earthjustice representing Residents Motion Coalition of Indiana, Simply Transition Northwest Indiana, Hoosier Environmental Council, and Public Citizen.

In December 2025, Donald Trump’s Division of Vitality compelled the final coal items on the R.M. Schahfer energy plant—working since 1976—and one of many coal items on the F.B. Culley producing station—inbuilt 1966—to remain on-line days earlier than their deliberate retirements. That is a part of Donald Trump’s try and bolster the flailing coal business on the expense of on a regular basis clients.

The illegal motion is anticipated to be very costly. For example, working Schahfer past 2025 would require multiple billion {dollars} in expenditures, based on a 2024 evaluation from the plant proprietor. Culley Unit 2’s proprietor considers it “among the many most inefficient items throughout the State” and amongst “the smallest and costlier coal items within the MISO stack,” additionally figuring that an extra $70 million in expenditures are wanted to maintain working.

Apart from the expenditures to rehabilitate the damaged and outmoded crops, each energy crops are anticipated to lose hundreds of thousands of {dollars} available in the market, as their coal and different working prices exceed the revenues they’ll earn. The crops’ house owners try to go down these prices to clients in Indiana and ten different states, and environmental and client advocacy teams are pushing again. Sierra Membership’s’Burning Cash’ tracker estimates the each day whole quantity that 202(c) orders are costing clients throughout the nation. In 2025, electrical energy costs rose by 6.7 p.c.

The Sierra Membership and Earthjustice have additionally challenged comparable orders in Washington, Michiganand Pennsylvania. Colorado’s Craig energy plant additionally acquired an illegal extension order for which challenges are due subsequent week.

“At a time when People are already fighting skyrocketing utility payments and rising grocery prices, Donald Trump and his administration are exacerbating the affordability disaster by extending the lifetime of outdated, retiring coal crops, additional driving up prices for on a regular basis People,” stated Sierra Membership Senior Lawyer Tony Mendoza. “We’re difficult this sham ‘emergency order’ as a result of we consider that hardworking households shouldn’t have at hand over their hard-earned cash to coal executives on the order of Donald Trump. We are going to proceed to push again in opposition to this unlawful try and prop up these costly, polluting coal crops.”

“American households are fighting file excessive utility payments in Trump’s inflation financial system, as a result of his atrocious vitality insurance policies pressure working households to bail out costly coal energy crops,” stated Tyson Slocum, Vitality Program Director for Public Citizen. “Trump explicitly and repeatedly promised to chop People’ vitality payments throughout the marketing campaign, even writing in a Newsweek op-ed on October 1, 2024 that as President he would ‘lower vitality and electrical energy costs in half inside 12 months—not only for companies however for all People and their households.’ Trump’s expensive coal bailouts have ensured his marketing campaign promise is a lie”.

“The federal authorities has invented a grid reliability disaster in a clear and unlawful try and commandeer uneconomic, dilapidated energy crops, pressure them to function, and stick us with the invoice.” stated Ben Inskeep, Program Director at Residents Motion Coalition. “We’re combating again in opposition to the federal authorities’s unprecedented overreach that can trigger our utility payments to soar and choke Hoosier communities with extra poisonous air pollution from coal.”

“It is a pointless, last-ditch effort to resuscitate a dying business to energy the AI increase,” stated Ashley Williams, Government Director of Simply Transition Northwest Indiana. “Our communities are organizing and confronting the Trump administration’s shameful actions. This order can have irreversible penalties, locking in generations extra of climate-devastating air pollution and poisonous coal ash waste contaminating the waterways of Jasper County and past. It exacerbates an affordability disaster the place households are sacrificing their fundamental must pay escalating utility payments, a actuality Hoosiers know all too nicely.”

“Cleaner energy sources can be found and Schahfer and Culley had been able to cease burning coal, so the federal order for them to proceed burning coal is an unwarranted extension of coal and coal ash air pollution in Indiana,” stated Indra Frank, Coal Ash Advisor at Hoosier Environmental Council.

“As soon as once more, President Trump’s Division of Vitality is making an attempt to pressure Midwest residential and enterprise shoppers to pay increased electrical energy payments to maintain coal crops operating which can be now not wanted and never economically viable,” stated Howard Learner, Government Director & CEO, Environmental Legislation & Coverage Middle. “The utilities already made the precise monetary name to retire these crops. The Trump DOE is making a nasty scenario worse relating to vitality affordability issues that hit peoples’ wallets onerous, whereas including extra air pollution that harms public well being.”

“Our nation’s cautious steadiness between the States and the federal authorities for regulating electrical energy labored right here. The house owners of those energy crops determined years in the past that the crops are too outdated, unreliable, soiled, and costly to proceed kicking the can down the highway with extra upgrades to maintain them going.  As a substitute, they resolved to exchange the coal crops with sources that higher meet their clients’ wants, and so they adopted by means of,” stated Sameer Doshi, Senior Lawyer at Earthjustice.  “State regulators and the federally-regulated transmission grid operator all checked out these plans and noticed no downside.  The Division of Vitality hasn’t remotely proven any emergency within the energy system that might help upending these plans.”

The so-called ‘emergency order’ has traditionally solely been invoked throughout excessive climate circumstances or wartime. As part of the rehearing request, Sierra Membership, ELPC, and Earthjustice argue that the DOE failed to supply ample proof of any emergency or electrical energy scarcity within the area warranting the order to maintain Schahfer and Culley open.

Clients residing in Indiana are already slated to foot the invoice for the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan, which acquired an identical sham ‘emergency order’ in Could 2025 and has been receiving repeat orders since (now totaling three orders). The Campbell plant value an additional $615,000 per day to stay on-line throughout the first 4 months of the DOE’s emergency orders.

Concerning the Sierra Membership

The Sierra Membership is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental group, with hundreds of thousands of members and supporters. Along with defending each individual’s proper to get outdoor and entry the therapeutic energy of nature, the Sierra Membership works to advertise clear vitality, safeguard the well being of our communities, shield wildlife, and protect our remaining wild locations by means of grassroots activism, public schooling, lobbying, and authorized motion. For extra data, go to www.sierraclub.org.