Low-Energy Fridays: Emergency Orders Are Not a Grid Reliability Strategy

In May, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) ordered two power plants on the verge of retiring to remain operational for a time. Typical bureaucratic meddling. The agency said that the plants—a Michigan coal plant and a Pennsylvania natural gas plant—were necessary for system reliability; however, grid operators in both cases had run the numbers and signed off on the shutdowns.

Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act (FPA) gives the DOE the authority to issue such orders in an emergency. The agency has used this authority roughly once a year over the past 25 years, but only when directly requested by a grid operator or electric utility to aid in responding to extreme weather events like hurricanes or winter storms. This was different. Although the FPA empowers the DOE to act in an emergency, many state officials and grid experts said no such emergency existed. While the agency itself claimed to identify a threat to grid reliability, operators had carefully studied the effects of the long-planned retirements and concluded that reliability wasn’t at risk.

State regulators objected to the orders. Environmentalists worried about excess emissions. Ratepayers worried they would have to foot the bill for plants the grid no longer needed. Lawsuits followed almost immediately.

Then, in mid-June, a heat dome slowly crawled straight over Pennsylvania on its way to the Midwest. Temperatures soared, power demand surged, and the gas plant that had planned to retire at the end of May was called into service on the three hottest days of the week. (It’s unclear as of this writing whether the Michigan plant ran during the heat wave.)

The Pennsylvania plant being called into operation might sound like vindication for DOE’s reliability orders, but it wasn’t. The PJM Interconnection (the grid that includes Pennsylvania) exported power to neighboring regions on all three of those days. While Eastern and Midwestern power grids operated in or near emergency conditions due to high demand, PJM generated enough power to meet its own soaring demand and help out its neighbors.

Washington’s emergency orders are no substitute for sound reliability policy. They didn’t fix planning gaps or address actual failures—they simply overrode local decisions and kept plants online, with ratepayers left to foot the bill. Those moves undercut markets and grid rules designed to support reliable generation. The DOE’s new grid reliability report projects a significant mismatch between load growth and firm generating capacity by 2030. If its methods hold up under scrutiny, then its findings only strengthen the case for structural reform over ad hoc intervention.

There are more durable options for shoring up grid reliability than emergency mandates. The first is improving cold-weather performance. Most large-scale outages in recent years have stemmed from generator failures and fuel supply issues during winter storms—not summer heat. Second, modest increases in demand-side flexibility can meaningfully reduce system stress. Letting a slice of load respond to prices or reliability signals does more for grid stability than forcing old plants to linger.

Third, interconnection delays and siting bottlenecks remain some of the biggest obstacles to adding new capacity. Clearing those backlogs would do more to strengthen the grid than any emergency order. And finally, prices must send the right signals during tight conditions so the generators that show up when they’re needed most are fairly rewarded while those that don’t stop dragging down the system.

The Trump administration says it wants to revitalize the American energy industry, especially fossil fuel production and consumption. But a dynamic, powerful energy industry cannot be stage-managed from federal offices in Washington, D.C. Emergency orders and forced contracts don’t strengthen markets—they crowd them out. We don’t get investment by second-guessing retirements and overriding price signals; instead, we get it by letting markets work, removing roadblocks that slow new supply, and stepping back when the system holds. Washington can’t micromanage grid resilience into existence. It can only choose not to choke it off.