"West Michigan’s J.H. Campbell power plant was scheduled to be retired before President Donald Trump took executive action in 2025."
"Michigan’s Department of Attorney General and several environmental justice groups presented oral arguments on Friday before a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, arguing that emergency orders that kept the J.H. Campbell coal plant from retiring were illegal applications of federal law.
A team of lawyers from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office, Earth Justice and the Sierra Club each argued that the U.S. Department of Energy’s declared energy emergency in May 2025 forced the Michigan plant, located in West Olive, to remain open past its scheduled retirement. That order has been renewed four times since being issued last year.
The administration contends that keeping the coal plants operational is necessary to protect the stability of the grid while demand for electricity is increasing due to artificial intelligence data centers and manufacturing growth.
Nessel’s team argued that the initial order disregarded the prior planning and regulatory approvals of Consumers Energy, which operates that plant. Nessel’s team called it another example of the Trump administration arbitrarily issuing false emergencies as a pretext to advance its energy policies outside of its authority."
