A federal appeals court vacates the DOE order that kept a Michigan coal plant running, holding that resource adequacy is for states and regional operators

A federal appeals court has vacated the Department of Energy order that kept a Michigan coal plant running past its retirement date, and the reason it gave is about who is entitled to decide.

On 11 September 2026 the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in People of the State of Michigan v. Department of Energy, docket 25-1159, granted the petitions for review and vacated DOE's order under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. The order had required Consumers Energy to keep the 1,420 MW coal-fired J.H. Campbell plant at West Olive, Michigan operating beyond its 31 May 2025 retirement date.

The court read emergency narrowly. Section 202(c), it held, reaches transitory emergencies caused by war, extreme weather events, market manipulation or unplanned unavailability, not longer-term reliability concerns; and responsibility for planning resource adequacy sits with states and regional operators rather than with a federal agency that disagrees with the outcome. DOE's broader reading, the court said, would invite frequent federal interventions unsupported by the statute. The petitioners were the attorneys general of Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, together with environmental organisations including Sierra Club and Urban Core Collective represented by Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund. DOE may seek Supreme Court review.

The point here is not coal, and a publication that covers decentralization has no business pretending a coal retirement is its beat. What is its beat is the mechanism. Emergency authority is the general-purpose instrument by which a distributed planning process gets overridden from the centre: it is fast, it is unilateral, it does not require the agency to win an argument before acting, and by the time anyone has litigated it the money has been spent. A state process approved the retirement and the regional market cleared its capacity auction without the plant. The federal department substituted its own judgement for both, and a court has now said the statute does not let it. [UNVERIFIED] That the retirement was approved through a Michigan state commission proceeding comes from search summaries of the coverage rather than from a retrieved state order.

The cost is the half a vacatur does not repair. Utility Dive, citing a Consumers Energy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, reports that compliance costs through 30 June came to $259 million after $239 million in MISO revenues. That is a net quarter of a billion dollars incurred under an order a court has since held unlawful, and the ruling does not return it. A constraint on emergency power that binds only after the bills are paid constrains less than it appears to. [NEEDS DATA: the cost recovery mechanism, and the share landing on Consumers Energy's customers]

There is a further thread the coverage mostly leaves loose. The Michigan Attorney General's press release is titled as vacating the first DOE order forcing operation of the plant, which implies there are others. If the department issued successive orders on the same theory, a ruling on the first one settles less than the headline suggests, and the practical question is whether the reasoning reaches the rest or whether the cycle simply restarts.

[UNVERIFIED] The slip opinion was not fetched and its text has not been read. Every characterisation of the court's reasoning above comes from Utility Dive's report of 11 September 2026 and from search-result summaries of the Justia listing, the Michigan Attorney General's release, RTO Insider and a Volokh Conspiracy post. [UNVERIFIED] A search summary describes the panel as a unanimous three judges; that is not confirmed. [UNVERIFIED] The fetched source gives the cost cut-off as 30 June without a year, and 2026 is assumed.