The government issued 23 orders under Section 202(c) during the 1940s and almost none in the decades that followed.
In the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, the Department of Energy used the power 12 times in response to requests from utilities or grid operators, usually for permission to operate plants briefly in excess of emissions limits.
Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has used this power differently, seemingly to benefit coal producers by preventing coal plants from closing. The key difference is that this latest wave of orders, starting in May 2025 with the JH Campbell plant in Michigan, was not sought by plant owners.
“What the administration is doing now is using these 202(c) orders to basically override all of the long-term resource adequacy and grid planning that states, regional transmission organizations, and utilities do,” Klass said. “And this is now coming in saying, ‘We don’t care what any of you experts and planners have to say. We want to save the coal industry, and we’re going to use this emergency authority that’s not designed for long-term resource planning.’”
Consumers Energy, the utility that operates JH Campbell, had planned to close the plant and replace it with a less-expensive combination of a natural gas plant and renewables that already were online.
Think of this in terms of the car you drive. You bought a new car and then the government says you need to keep your old one and continue driving it, even if it’s spewing black smoke and costs more to run than your new one.
The JH Campbell plant, opened in 1960, has a summer generating capacity of 1,331 megawatts. In 2024, it emitted 8.9 million tons of carbon dioxide, ranking 19th among US power plants, based on an analysis of federal Energy Information Administration data.
It got its fuel last year from the country’s two largest coal mines by production, North Antelope Rochelle Mine and Black Thunder, according to regulatory filings. Both are based in Wyoming and they are owned by Peabody Energy and Core Natural Resources, respectively.