[EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story implied that there was an error regarding MISO’s risk in NERC’s Summer Reliability Assessment. It has been corrected to say that the error was in the Long-Term Reliability Assessment.]

Legal challenges to the U.S. Department of Energy’s order to keep the J.H. Campbell power plant in Michigan open mounted with appeals of the initial order and comments at the case in front of FERC on how to pay for it. (See Consumers Energy Seeking Compensation for Keeping Campbell Open.)

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a request for rehearing at DOE on June 18 and intervened in the FERC docket (EL25-90) on June 20.

“The closure of this coal-powered electric plant has been planned for years; the utility made all due preparations to maintain our energy load without it; and the closure has been agreed to and cited in settlements affecting customer costs,” Nessel said in a statement. “In particular, if this arbitrary and unlawful order is allowed to stand, the only effect Michiganders will feel will be the pinch in their pockets. The costs of maintaining production at the plant, long since prepared for closure, could be an enormous burden on the ratepaying customers of Consumers Energy.”

The rehearing request her office filed argued the Campbell order “is an unlawful abuse of the department’s emergency authority” that it previously used only in response to natural disasters and requests from grid operators or other governmental bodies. Claims that keeping the plant running this summer responds to an emergency “cannot even bear the mildest scrutiny.”

Nessel also argued that MISO has found it has enough power to meet demand this summer. NERC did place the region under “elevated risk” in its Summer Reliability Assessment, but the attorney general said that was not even its highest level of risk in the report, and MISO has gotten that label regularly in reliability assessments this decade. MISO’s anticipated reserve margin this summer beats its target and is higher than it has been most of this decade, she said.

“The order indicates that the department believes it has the authority to decide which power plants may retire and when, not based on the kind of real emergency that has justified past action, but rather based on its own policy preferences,” Nessel said. “The department appears to want to place its own judgment about operating reserve margins ahead of MISO’s, and its own preference for which resources are employed to maintain resource adequacy ahead of Michigan’s.”

NERC mistakenly labeled MISO at “high risk” in its Long-Term Reliability Assessment based on what it called “mismatched data” from the RTO and said it should be reclassified as “elevated risk” for 2025-2027. The ERO admitted the mistake after criticism from Independent Market Monitor David Patton, who argued the report influenced DOE’s decision to keep Campbell open. (See NERC Responds to MISO IMM’s LTRA Criticism.)

Earthjustice, Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Public Citizen and other groups filed a separate rehearing request at DOE.

“The order is based on a profoundly incorrect understanding of the handful of sources it selectively quotes,” the groups said. “Those sources, and the order itself, do not support the order’s claim of a resource adequacy emergency in any of the various locations at which the order ambiguously gestures.”

Keeping the plant running at this point will be costly because Consumers deliberately minimized investments in it in recent years as it was expected to be retired, they argued. Getting it running could cost tens of millions of dollars, they said.

The same groups made a joint filing at FERC, where the only issue before the commission is who will pay for the power plant. The validity and sufficiency of the order will be addressed through pending requests for rehearing at DOE and, “potentially, litigation thereafter.”

“The commission lacks a basis to determine which, if any, utility ratepayers will materially benefit from the Campbell plant’s operation pursuant to the department’s order,” the groups said. “Ratepayers in Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and other MISO states have met, and are already paying for, their resource adequacy obligations under MISO’s commission-approved framework for the order’s period.”

They argued consumers in MISO already have secured sufficient resources for this summer, so none of them would be clear beneficiaries of keeping the coal plant open, which means FERC cannot assign costs at this time. The environmental and consumer groups asked FERC to deny the complaint or to hold off ruling on the request for now.

The RTO itself weighed in on the FERC case, saying that while it does not intend to challenge DOE’s order, it has procured enough capacity for this summer’s demand. It has worked with its members, market participants, state regulators and FERC to ensure reliability going forward.

“MISO continues to work with these parties in the context of anticipated growing demand for electricity, planned electric generating facility retirements and an evolving mix of new electric generating resources to refine processes that address the challenges ahead,” it said. “MISO is confident that these collaborative efforts do not require further intervention and will help ensure the region continues to procure sufficient capacity to meet demand.”

But the order is in effect, and MISO lacks any current rules to allocate the costs of keeping the plant running, it said.

Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said that while Campbell is the subject of the proceeding at FERC, DOE already has used its emergency powers in PJM and could use them for other plants. NIPSCO supports Consumers’ request, but DOE’s ongoing use of the authority sheds light on the need for a more universal fix in MISO’s tariff.

FERC should direct MISO to come up with more universal rules on cost recovery so it does not have to deal with future requests in a “piecemeal fashion,” NIPSCO said. “The circumstances that Consumers Energy has found itself in may very well present themselves to other generators in the MISO region, and without an appropriate rate recovery mechanism, MISO’s existing tariff may be unjust and unreasonable.”