The Department of Energy (DOE) has issued four additional Section 202(c) emergency orders in December, directing utilities and grid operators to halt the retirement of coal-fired units—a combined capacity of more than 2 GW—across three regions: the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and Mountain West. This brings the total number of such orders since May 2025 to at least 16, with the DOE now stalling the retirement of at least 4.5 GW of coal capacity.
On December 30, the DOE ordered co-owners of the 430-MW Craig Station Unit 1 in Colorado to maintain the coal-fired unit’s availability through March 30, 2026. Earlier, on December 23, the DOE issued directives requiring CenterPoint Energy and Northern Indiana Public Service Co. to keep three coal units—Unit 2 at F.B. Culley and Units 17 and 18 at the Schahfer station in Indiana—online through March 23. The orders follow a December 16 directive to TransAlta to keep Centralia Generating Station Unit 2 in Washington available through March 16.
Since May, the DOE has significantly expanded its use of Section 202(c) authority to compel the continued operation of generation and transmission assets deemed critical to grid reliability. Orders have repeatedly required utilities, independent system operators, and balancing authorities to override planned retirements, environmental operating limits, and market-based outcomes by mandating unit availability, extended run-hours, and coordinated operating measures to address projected supply shortfalls.
The most recent order, issued December 30, directs Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a not-for-profit generation and transmission electric cooperative, and its four co-owners—Platte River Power Authority, Salt River Project, PacifiCorp, and Xcel Energy—to keep Unit 1 at the Craig Station in northwestern Colorado available to operate through March 30, 2026. Craig Station is a three-unit coal-fired generating plant located near Craig in northwestern Colorado and operated by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. The facility has a combined nameplate capacity of 1,427.6 MW, consisting of Unit 1 (446.4 MW), Unit 2 (446.4 MW), and Unit 3 (534.8 MW). While Unit 1 was scheduled to cease operations on Dec. 31, 2025, Units 2 and 3 were slated for retirement in 2028.
Unit 1’s planned retirement stems from a September 2016 agreement among the Craig Station owners—Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, PacifiCorp, Platte River Power Authority, Salt River Project, and Public Service Company of Colorado—with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and environmental groups to revise Colorado’s regional haze State Implementation Plan (SIP). The agreement followed a 2014 SIP that required significant reductions in nitrogen oxides at Unit 1 by August 2021. After reviewing compliance options—including installing additional emissions controls and switching fuels—the unit’s owners opted to seek an extension and commit to unit retirement, citing regulatory conditions, market outlooks, and the substantial cost of further emissions controls.
But, in its Dec. 30 order, the DOE said it relied in part on findings from the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC’s) 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, which identified growing reliability risks in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council’s (WECC’s) Northwest assessment area—covering Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming—amid accelerating baseload retirements. The DOE cited NERC’s projections that 5 GW “of baseload resource retirements are anticipated between 2024 and 2028.” It also pointed to the 2024 WECC Western Assessment of Resource Adequacy that found that peak demand in WECC’s Northwest-Central subregion (which includes Colorado) is “forecast to grow by 8.5% over the next decade, from 33 GW in 2025 to 36 GW in 2034.”
WECC, the DOE noted, found most planned retirements involve “baseload generation, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear.” The DOE also cited the pace of generation retirements in Colorado, noting that since 2019, 571.3 MW of coal-fired capacity across six units at three sites have retired, reducing coal’s share of in-state generation from 4