(The Center Square) – The Trump administration on Wednesday issued an emergency order requiring a coal-fired power plant in Washington state to remain open this winter, citing a need to ensure grid reliability in the months ahead.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed Canada-based power generation company TransAlta to keep Unit 2 of the Centralia Generating Station, located about 65 miles south of Seattle, available to operate until March 16. The Energy Department said the order minimizes the risk and cost of blackouts across the Northwest.
TransAlta had scheduled a permanent shutdown of Unit 2 at the end of 2025. In early December, the company signed a deal that would allow it to convert the unit to gas-fired power generation, with planned capacity of 700 megawatts. Unit 1 at the plant was decommissioned in December 2020.
The order to keep Unit 2 open comes eight months after President Donald Trump authorized the Energy Department to use emergency powers to force soon-to-retire coal plants to remain operational.
The order declared a “national energy emergency” due to surging electricity demand. It aims to remove “federal regulatory barriers that undermine coal production, encouraging the utilization of coal to meet growing domestic energy demands, increasing American coal exports, and ensuring that federal policy does not discriminate against coal production or coal-fired electricity generation.”
The region affected by the Energy Department’s order, covering Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Montana, Wyoming, Utah and California, is at a higher risk for blackouts in prolonged periods of frigid temperatures, according to an assessment by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an independent regulatory authority tasked with ensuring grid reliability across the U.S., Canada and parts of Mexico.
Peak winter demand for electricity in the region could be 2.9 gigawatts higher than last year, an increase of 9.3%, according to the regulator’s forecast.
TransAlta has invested more than $300 million in pollution control technology at the Centralia Plant, including scrubbers and low nitrogen dioxide burners, and the facility is now one of the cleanest coal-fired power plants in North America, according to the company’s website.
Environmental advocacy groups disagreed. The Sierra Club said Wednesday the order to keep the facility open would “forcibly and illegally extend operations” at the Centralia TransAlta site.
The Sierra Club said it would cost roughly $65 million to keep the plant online, according to the group’s studies.
The Sierra Club is fighting two other emergency orders from the Energy Department that mandate the continued operation of power plants in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Both are now scheduled to remain online into February.
