“Arbitrary, capricious” DOE report could pave the way for billions in unnecessary costs to subsidize fossil fuel profits
Today, Canary Media reported that state Attorneys General are demanding the Department of Energy (DOE) fix what they call an “arbitrary, capricious” and “contrary to law” grid reliability analysis. The Trump administration is expected to use the flawed report to justify forcing costly, polluting fossil fuel plants to run past their planned retirement dates, potentially sticking ratepayers with billions in unnecessary costs.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright already ordered two aging fossil fuel plants, including a coal plant in Michigan and a gas plant in Pennsylvania, to stay open past scheduled retirements. Last week, federal regulators approved utilities’ plans to recover the added costs, leaving customers across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.
Wright invoked wartime emergency powers, citing a phantom energy emergency that local officials said didn’t exist. But Trump’s manufactured “emergency” risks creating a real one. By blocking cheaper, faster-to-build wind and solar while doubling down on dirty, expensive fossil fuels—at the same time he’s racing to supercharge AI data center construction—the administration is driving up costs that utilities will pass directly to customers.
The bottom line: Trump is cooking the books to keep old, unreliable, expensive fossil fuel plants alive—and customers are left footing the bill while corporate polluters walk away with the profits.
ICYMI: Canary Media: State AGs demand DOE fix its flawed grid-reliability report
By: Jeff St. John
August 20, 2025
Key Points:
- The Trump administration is expected to use a controversial Energy Department report to justify keeping costly fossil-fueled power plants online past their retirement dates. But nine state attorneys general and several clean-energy industry groups are demanding the agency fix the document’s heavily criticized methodology.
- The report, which found that the country will face a hundredfold increase in grid blackout risks absent extraordinary federal intervention, was blasted by experts upon its release in July. The DOE’s analysis ignores hundreds of gigawatts of new energy resources likely to come online in the coming years, the vast majority of it solar, batteries, and wind power, and it overstates power plant closures expected over the next five years.
- The DOE hasn’t yet cited the analysis to support any stay-open orders. But the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Washington wrote that an April executive order from President Donald Trump and “subsequent statements by DOE make clear that the report will be used to justify Section 202(c) orders going forward.”
- Already, before the report was issued, the DOE had used Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to order the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan and the Eddystone oil- and gas-burning plant in Pennsylvania to keep running on the eve of their planned closures, at a steep cost to consumers.
- Forcing more such plants to stay open would drive up electricity costs further and scramble long-running plans from utilities and energy developers to build resources to replace the shuttered facilities.
- Doing so would also be illegal, the attorneys general state. “The Report is arbitrary, capricious, contrary to law, and unsupported by substantial evidence in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and Federal Power Act because it suffers from numerous analytical, mathematical, and empirical flaws.”
- The DOE wrote the July report to comply with April’s executive order that seeks to give the agency unilateral authority to force power plants to keep running, even when utilities, state regulators, grid operators, and other experts say it’s safe — and economically prudent — to close them down.
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