Environmentalists are pushing back against the Trump administration’s move last month to force a coal plant to keep operating past its planned retirement.
On Wednesday, Earthjustice and other environmental groups challenged the Energy Department to reconsider its decision in May to force the J.H. Campbell coal plant, an aging, 1,560-megawatt coal plant on the shores of Lake Michigan, to keep running through the summer.
The groups say the DOE move will raise costs for consumers.
“The order is unlawful, unreasonable and unnecessary,” Shannon Fisk, an attorney with Earthjustice, told POLITICO’s E&E News. “The administration is concocting an emergency to try to step in and disrupt a planned retirement that has been agreed to by all the major players in Michigan.”
