Coal Lobbyist Loses Fight to Keep 'Old, Expensive, Dirty' Plant Open, Asks Trump for the Same Power Anyway

…(cont) On September 11, a federal appellate court told the Department of Energy no. The case involved a Michigan coal plant the DOE had ordered kept open by emergency fiat. The court called the plant, in its own opinion, "old, expensive, and dirty," and ruled the government could not use an emergency power meant for wartime to prop up a business model the market had already rejected. Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy, put it plainer than the court did: the ruling rejected "the Trump administration's nationwide push forcing unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online."

Three days later, on September 14, the EPA announced it would gut the very pollution rule that Michigan plant had been fighting in the first place — the Biden-era rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the largest industrial source of climate pollution in the country. Advocates called the rollback "actively malevolent." I would only note that the agency moved to erase the rule the same month a court had just cited it as reason enough for the plant to close.

Now, all together now, the second clause: the lobbyist's letter. It asks the administration to reach for the exact emergency-powers tool a federal court had just ruled illegal, for a plant no different in kind from the one the court had already thrown out. Not a new idea. The same idea, filed again, after losing.

On September 24, Senate Democrats put a number on why anyone would bother asking twice.

The letter does not carry its own date in the record. What it carries is a title, "previously unreported," and a request the courts had already answered. That is the filing. That is the whole filing.