Dave Anderson A Department of Energy memorandum identified significant logistical challenges facing the Trump administration’s last-minute order to prevent the closure of the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in Michigan.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued the order on May 23, just eight days before the plant was scheduled to shut down on May 31st. Wright’s order invokes wartime powers typically reserved for temporary electric grid emergencies related to extreme weather, but Michigan’s top state utility regulator says no energy emergency exists to warrant the order.
The DOE memo was also dated May 23 and marked as privileged and Controlled Unclassified Information, or CUI. The memo identifies “SENSITIVITIES” and makes clear the “challenges” the plant’s owner Consumers Energy may face if forced by Wright to reverse course on the closure after years of preparations and planning:
Past the planned retirement date of May 31, Consumers has ended its contracts for coal procurement, coal delivery, and power plant staffing and may face challenges with addressing these issues on short notice. The order provides reasonable last-minute contract extensions for fuel and operations, if feasible.
The memo was addressed to Wright and from Alex Fitzsimmons, a Trump DOE political appointee who previously held jobs at organizations funded by one of the power plant’s coal suppliers. Fitzsimmons recommended in the memo that Wright approve the order.
Fitzsimmons’ memo was initially posted publicly on DOE’s website, but the link where the memo was previously found now leads to a “Page not found” message. The existence of the memo was mentioned last week by the local news site Hollander.News.
Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said Wright’s order “serves no purpose beyond attempting to prop up the dying coal industry.”
“We currently produce more energy in Michigan than needed,” Michigan Public Service Commission Chair Dan Scripps said. “The unnecessary recent order from the U.S. Department of Energy will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses across the Midwest.”
The cost of procuring additional coal and keeping the plant open will fall on customers of Consumers Energy and other utilities located within the 15-state Midwest Independent System Operator regional power grid, which the J.H. Campbell plant is connected to. Consumers Energy previously estimated the plant’s closure would save its customers in Michigan $600 million. Wright’s order expires on August 21, meaning the plant could still close soon unless the order is extended.
The latest fuel receipt data available from the Energy Information Administration identifies the North Antelope Rochelle and Black Thunder coal mines in Wyoming as suppliers of coal for the power plant. The Black Thunder Mine is owned by Core Natural Resources, the fossil fuel company formed by the merger of Arch Coal and CONSOL Energy.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reports that Peabody Energy provided 1.47 million tons of coal to the J.H. Campbell plant last year. Peabody Energy told the Cowboy State News in Wyoming last week that it supplies coal to other plants in Michigan, but not to the J.H. Campbell plant.
After Wright signed the J.H. Campbell order last month, Peabody Energy called for further action to “halt coal plant retirements, use existing plants at higher utilization and restart shuttered coal plants.”
James Grech, the CEO of Peabody Energy, attended the White House ceremony in April where Trump signed an executive order commanding Wright to use DOE’s emergency powers under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to prevent the closure of coal plants. Peabody Energy and Core Natural Resources’ stock value jumped after Trump signed the executive order, along with several others benefiting the coal industry.
The National Mining Association (NMA) praised Wright’s J.H. Campbell order in a post on the website of its Count on Coal campaign and in a video. NMA reported lobbying the White House and DOE on the use of Federal Power Act authorities earlier this year. Paul Lang, the CEO of Core Natural Resources, is currently the chairman of NMA’s board of directors.
Wright signed another Section 202(c) order late last week to prevent the closure of the Eddystone gas plant in Pennsylvania, in another move opposed by environmental groups like the Sierra Club, which warned it would hurt everyday utility customers.
Trump political appointee Alex Fitzsimmons, who previously worked for organizations funded by Peabody Energy, recommended Chris Wright issue the order
Fitzsimmons was tapped last month to lead DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) after serving as Wright’s chief of staff since January.
Fitzsimmons previously served as a political appointee in DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during Trump’s first term as president. In between Trump’s terms in the White House, Fitzsimmons worked for an energy storage company and for ClearPath, a conservative group that’s supportive of clean energy but holds a favorable view of fossil fuels.
Fitzsimmons worked on energy policy for the Institute for Energy Research (IER) and its lobbying arm the American Energy Alliance (AEA) from January 2013 to April 2014 and again from November 2014 to January 2017.
At IER/AEA, Fitzsimmons was part of a long-running campaign by right-wing groups aligned with the fossil fuel industry to roll back state renewable energy standards that have helped power the growth of wind and solar power.
“Launched an in-house ghostwriting shop that crafts, pitches, and places op-eds on behalf of partner organizations,” Fitzsimmons said of his work for IER/AEA on a resume obtained from DOE by American Oversight.
In 2016, Peabody Energy had to disclose it paid $50,000 to IER over the previous two years. The disclosure came in Peabody Energy’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, where the coal producer also had to reveal its funding of multiple climate change denial and anti-clean energy groups.
Peabody Energy also listed AEA as a creditor in its bankruptcy case.
Fitzsimmons spent eight months in 2014 at the corporate public relations firm Berman & Company, where he worked with a front group called the Environmental Policy Alliance that attacked environmental conservation groups like Trout Unlimited. Peabody Energy later listed Berman & Company as a creditor in its bankruptcy.
Fitzsimmons also worked for a year and a half in 2016-2017 as the Director of Communications for the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce’s pro-fossil fuels Fueling U.S. Forward campaign. Fitzsimmons described the experience on his resume:
As the first hire for a multi-million dollar energy-advocacy campaign funded by Koch Industries and led by former AFPM President Charles Drevna, I managed the public launch of the organization in 2016 and am responsible for developing and executing the communications and digital-media strategy.
Koch Industries is the petrochemical company helmed by billionaire conservative megadonor Charles Koch. AFPM is the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. Wright was an outspoken member of Koch’s network of political donors before he was tapped to become Trump’s Energy Secretary in November.
AEA endorsed Trump for president during the 2016 election. After Trump won, he also picked several of Fitzsimmons’ former IER colleagues to serve on his presidential transition team and as DOE political appointees during his first term. Among them was Travis Fisher, who co-authored a DOE grid study that Trump’s first Secretary of Energy Rick Perry used as a pretense for a failed 2017 proposal to bail out struggling coal and nuclear plants. Perry’s proposal would have cost consumers billions of dollars if it hadn’t been rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Perry spoke openly in 2017 about the administration’s “very classified” conversations about using national security as a pretext for preempting state climate change and clean energy policies. In January, Trump declared a national energy emergency and cited what he called “dangerous State and local policies [that] jeopardize our Nation’s core national defense and security needs” in an executive order signed on the first day of his second term.
In April, seven Republican state lawmakers from Michigan signed a letter to the Trump administration attributing the J.H. Campbell plant’s closure to the 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 law enacted by Michigan in 2023. Consumers Energy first announced plans to phase out its use of coal in 2018, and the Michigan Public Service Commission later approved a multi-party agreement to close the J.H. Campbell plant by 2025 and invest in cleaner sources of electricity like solar and energy storage.
“This administration will not sit back and allow dangerous energy subtraction policies threaten the resiliency of our grid and raise electricity prices on American families,” Wright said in a DOE press release last month announcing the order to keep the J.H. Campbell plant running until August.
IER published a post this week highlighting Wright’s order as “contrary” to Michigan’s clean electricity law and “Consumers Energy’s plans to remove coal entirely from its fleet by closing the Campbell plant.”
Trump’s executive order revamps a failed first-term attempt to use Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to bail out coal-fired power plants for the benefit of top donors
In 2018, a leaked memorandum revealed the Trump administration was considering using Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act and the Defense Production Act to bail out coal plants struggling to compete with cheaper and cleaner forms of electricity. Trump abandoned that first-term effort amid concerns from advisors like Larry Kudlow that the public would view the move as a bailout.
The electric utility FirstEnergy later admitted to federal prosecutors that it secretly paid $5 million in 2017 to America First Policies, a group formed by Trump insiders to support Trump’s agenda, as it lobbied the Trump administration for a Section 202(c) bailout for its coal and nuclear power plants.
FirstEnergy was joined in the push by coal producers Murray Energy, which contributed $1 million to the pro-Trump Super PAC America First Action in 2017, and Alliance Resource Partners.
Joe Craft, the CEO of Alliance Alliance Resource Partners, attended Trump’s pro-coal executive order signing ceremony in April. Craft contributed $1 million to Elon Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC last year.
Murray Energy and FirstEnergy’s power generation subsidiary declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy during Trump’s first term as president.
Top photo: Trump signs excutive orders supporting the coal industry from the White House Flickr photostream. United States government work license.
