Consumers Energy is waiting to find out if it can retire its last coal-burning plant.
Days before Consumers planned to let the last coals in the J.H. Campbell plant burn themselves out in May, shutting the plant down forever, the U.S. Department of Energy ordered the utility to keep it running for 90 days.
The DOE said it was due to an "energy emergency," and the risk of a shortfall of electricity during the summer months.
That's even though the regional grid operator and the Michigan Public Service Commission, which oversees the state's utilities, had already approved the closure of the plant near the shore of Lake Michigan — both because it's very old, expensive to run, and is more polluting than other sources of available electricity, and because the utility had already secured a natural gas plant with enough capacity to replace the coal plant's output.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and environmental groups contested the order. Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently signaled it might order other U.S. coal plants to stay open.
Consumers Energy is one of Michigan Public's corporate sponsors.
