Shannon Roxborough | October 23, 2026
Summary
The Trump administration is ordering coal plants to keep running after their owners planned to close them. It uses Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, an emergency provision that lets the Energy Department require a power plant to operate. Orders that may conflict with environmental law expire after 90 days but can be renewed, so the department renews them every three months. The 2026 list runs to 61 entries.
The department says the orders protect the grid. A regional grid operator, a federal appeals court and Michigan’s attorney general disagree. Meanwhile, clean energy jobs have grown faster than the workforce as a whole. The workers at these coal plants are waiting on the next order instead of moving into them.
Analysis
What is happening at one Michigan plant
The J.H. Campbell plant burns coal on the shore of Lake Michigan in West Olive. It is Consumers Energy’s last coal plant in Michigan. Consumers planned to close it on May 31, 2025, after a yearslong process overseen by the state. About 250 workers were to be reassigned. The plan also included replacement power, and the utility expected the closure to save customers $600 million by 2040.
Eight days before the closing, Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered the plant to stay open. A sixth order this August carries it to mid-November, more than 17 months past its retirement date. Workers who had planned to switch jobs or retire have waited through each renewal to learn whether they would stay on.
Who pays for it
Running a plant costs money whether or not the owner wants it running. By the end of June, the plant had cost Consumers a net $259 million. The company asked federal regulators to let it recover those costs from customers across the Midwest power grid, and Michigan’s attorney general is fighting that request. So households in several states may help pay for a plant their utility chose to retire.
Is the grid really at risk?
The department points to its own report. It warned that outages could multiply 100 times by 2030 if plants keep closing without enough replacement. In the report’s scenarios, that means a jump from about 8 hours of lost power a year to more than 800. Grid experts say the report misuses its data, and Michigan and nine other states’ attorneys general asked the department to rehear it.
For Campbell, the regional grid operator concluded years ago that the plant could retire without causing reliability problems. On September 11, the D.C. Circuit vacated the first order that kept Campbell open, ruling that the department had misused its emergency power. That ruling covers one order. The department keeps issuing new ones, and each stands until someone challenges it.
Why clean energy is the better path
Clean energy already employs about three times as many Americans as oil, gas and coal combined, according to the advocacy group E2. The same group found that companies cancelled $34.8 billion in clean energy projects and 38,000 jobs in 2025. Every order that props up a coal plant adds to the uncertainty that stalls the projects that would replace it. Michigan’s retirement plan already had replacement power in it. The order forces customers to pay for both.
Why jobs can fall while production rises
Oil and gas shows why protecting a plant does not protect its workers. Extraction employment fell to 114,500 in June, down from 187,300 in 2016, while production stayed near a record. Machines and mergers explain the gap. A rig that once needed a crew to take it apart and rebuild it at each new site now moves at the push of a button. Some 250,000 jobs disappeared after the 2014 peak while output rose 50%.
Researchers cited in the same report found that places losing oil and gas jobs are rarely the places adding clean energy ones. Retraining alone cannot bridge that distance. Miners also know what happens when an employer fails: bankruptcies stripped health benefits from thousands, the union told Congress in 2019.
Five changes that move workers toward clean energy
- Replace rolling 90-day orders with dated plans. Where a plant is truly needed, grid operators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should contract for it over a set term. Workers get a horizon and customers see a price.
- Build the replacement power first. Regulators should move solar, wind and battery projects through approval and grid connection fast enough that a retiring plant is replaced on schedule, not extended.
- Offer plant workers the new jobs. Utilities and developers that receive public support should give retiring plant workers first access to jobs on replacement projects, with pay protections.
- Bridge benefits across energy sectors. Congress should create pension bridges, portable health coverage and wage insurance for displaced coal, oil and gas workers.
- Spend transition money where the layoffs are. Fund site reuse and local hiring with worker representatives at the table. Fossil fuel unions and clean energy advocates will not agree on every priority, so the design must reconcile them.
The current Campbell order expires November 14. Another may follow. The people who run that plant need a date they can plan around.
Take Action
- E2’s clean jobs reports: See clean energy employment in your state.
- United Mine Workers of America: Follow its advocacy on miners’ benefits.
- Bridge Michigan’s reporting: Read how Campbell’s workers have waited on each order.
- The Campbel Order: Read the August 2025 order.
- Michigan’s court challenge: Follow the attorney general’s case against the orders.
Shannon Roxborough is a journalist and geopolitical analyst with more than 30 years of international reporting experience. His work has appeared in Money, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal Asia, with commentary cited in Barron’s. At US Resist News, he covers how federal environmental, energy, labor and economic policy lands on workers and communities.