The Energy Department ordered two Indiana coal plants to stay available through December 18, a week after a court vacated its Michigan coal plant order, citing grid reliability.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s department announced the new directives on Sept. 19 for units at Indiana’s R.M. Schahfer and F.B. Culley plants. The orders require the units to remain available through Dec. 18.
Daily Caller News Foundation reported the move came roughly a week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated Wright’s first emergency order for Michigan’s J.H. Campbell coal plant. That order dated to May 2025 and had kept the plant running past its planned retirement.
Wright’s team framed the Indiana action the same way it has framed earlier coal directives: forcing coal generation off the grid would hurt reliability and raise costs. Department Press Secretary Ben Dietderich said the agency disagrees with the D.C. Circuit decision and is working with the Justice Department on rehearing and appeal options.
Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote for the panel that vacated the Campbell order. The court held that the department had overstepped its emergency powers, as characterized in the reporting.
Pillard’s opinion stated that states “bear the responsibility to plan for and avert reliability risks on an ongoing basis.”
Energy Department Press Secretary Ben Dietderich answered that the emergency orders, including at Campbell, “prevented blackouts and likely saved hundreds of lives during peak capacity events this past year.”
"DOE disagrees with the decision and is working with DOJ to assess potential rehearing and appeal options."
Wright, in a department release, said forcing coal generation off the grid “would compromise energy reliability and needlessly raises energy costs for Americans.” The department also said the Indiana plants have been critical during high demand and low output from wind and solar, and that more than 17 gigawatts of coal generation were kept from going offline in 2025.
Keeping Campbell open past its May 2025 retirement date had cost about $259 million as of Sept. 11, according to financial filings cited in the reporting. The plant earned about $33.7 million selling electricity from late May through June 30, 2025, leaving its owner, Consumers Energy, with a profit of nearly five million dollars for that stretch.
Dietderich pointed to winter performance as well. Campbell ran at more than 650 megawatts every day from Jan. 21 to Feb. 1 during Winter Storm Fern. Coal generation in the affected regions rose 25 percent at the storm’s peak compared with the same time the prior year.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat whose office is challenging the orders, struck a different note after the ruling. Nessel said “this administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law.” Her office said the latest Campbell order runs through Nov. 14.
Northern Indiana Public Service Company owns Schahfer. The company told state reporters both units covered by the new orders remain offline for inspections, maintenance, and repairs. In August it asked federal regulators to approve about $38 million in cost recovery for the first quarter of 2026.
CenterPoint Energy owns Culley. The company said it is reviewing the Campbell ruling and evaluating implications for Culley 2, but that the decision “does not change” the department’s direction for the unit and that it will continue to comply.
CenterPoint also said: “At this time, there are no direct bill impacts to CenterPoint customers, but we remain committed to keeping customer affordability top-of-mind as we plan for recovery of costs associated with operating the unit.”
Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun praised the latest orders. He said they would “help protect Hoosiers from higher energy costs and keep the power on.”
The Campbell ruling also bears on a separate challenge to department orders for Colorado’s Craig Station Unit 1. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association public relations specialist Mark Stutz described that link for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The department issued three emergency orders for Craig Unit 1, the latest on June 26. Owners’ rehearing requests were denied automatically when the department did not act. The D.C. Circuit paused Tri-State’s first appeal on June 6 until 60 days after the Campbell ruling. Tri-State and co-owner Platte River Power Authority filed three petitions challenging the orders, the latest on Sept. 22. Tri-State has not disclosed the costs of keeping Craig Unit 1 running.
Reporting also noted department emergency orders covering coal plants in Florida and Washington state.
Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Jason Hayes said the court did not find spare firm power in the Midwest. “The court did not find that the Midwest has spare firm power,” Hayes said.
Hayes added: “People angry about the cost of keeping the Schahfer and Campbell plants running should actually be angry at the policies that retire dispatchable plants before a reliable replacement option is proposed.” He said state legislatures and Congress should require firm capacity to replace firm capacity before the next polar vortex. He also noted Campbell’s closure had been moved up 15 years.
Cato Institute energy policy director Travis Fisher took the other side on the statute. Fisher said Congress designed the emergency authority “for wartime emergencies” and that the D.C. Circuit “correctly found” the department’s reliance on a possible future shortfall “too open-ended.”
"The missing person in this... coalition is the ratepayer, whose bills go up when environmentalists and utilities team up to shut down existing plants."
Fisher also said plants “that pass the market test should neither be sued into oblivion nor micromanaged by the DOE.”
Energy analyst David Blackmon backed the department’s direction and called for more of it. “Not only are Secretary Wright and DOE doing the right thing ordering operators of these coal plants to maintain their availability in times of baseload constraints, the Trump administration should be doing more,” Blackmon said.
Blackmon added: “America’s regional grid operators can no longer afford to pretend that intermittent generation is a viable substitute for real baseload.”
Wright’s department has now kept issuing availability orders for coal units even after the Campbell setback. The Indiana directives run to Dec. 18. The legal fight over how far emergency power reaches is still moving through rehearing talks, owner petitions, and related challenges in other states.
When politicians retire on-demand plants before firm replacements are ready, families and factories pay the reliability bill, and the grid does not run on press releases.
