Trump's emergency orders pushing coal power are "illegal" as well as dumb
At one time, the US electricity grid ran mostly on coal. But coal-fired power plants have steadily been decommissioned. Power producers found the plants were too expensive to operate and carried risks tied to toxic air pollution, waste, and climate-warming emissions. Then President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year with a fresh zeal to revive the coal industry. His Department of Energy invoked emergency powers to force utilities to keep old plants operating. Read full article Comments
At one time, the US electricity grid ran mostly on coal.
But coal-fired power plants have steadily been decommissioned. Power producers found the plants were too expensive to operate and carried risks tied to toxic air pollution, waste, and climate-warming emissions.
A World War II-era policy is stopping old coal plants from closing.
Not only is this bad policy, it’s also a misuse of a law designed for wartime, according to legal scholars and analysts. If allowed to stand, this poses problems for utilities, grid operators, and regulators who plan for decades-long timeframes, only to be overruled by short-term political imperatives that favor certain industries.
“It’s just illegal,” said Alexandra Klass, a professor at University of Michigan Law School, about the emergency orders. She served in the Biden administration as a deputy general counsel at the Department of Energy.
