Electricity customers across a broad swath of the country will bear the costs of running an outdated fossil fuel power plant in Pennsylvania that federal energy regulators pulled back from the brink of retirement earlier this year.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month approved a plan that allows PJM Interconnection to recover its payments to the plant’s owner, Constellation Energy, from electricity users across its 13-state territory.

Environmental and renewable energy advocates and stakeholders in the regional electric grid opposed the system-wide cost sharing plan, arguing that it would unfairly raise electricity bills in areas that see little benefit from the old plant remaining online. 

The groups, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), say the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claim of an emergency as the reason for keeping the plant online doesn’t exist. 

The agency last month extended its order requiring the plant in suburban Philadelphia and another in southwest Michigan to keep operating for a total of 180 days beyond their planned shut down dates. 

Opponents warn that it will add to soaring energy costs for consumers and prevent badly needed new electricity generators from connecting to the grid. The groups say the regulatory interventions used to keep the plant running and spread out the costs will be used in the future as U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright executes the administration’s fossil fuel-first energy policy.

Wright, a former oil drilling and mining company executive, has described the future of coal as “long and bright.”

PJM said in a statement that it has documented its concerns about demand growth and power plant retirements leading to serious ramifications for reliability and affordability. It called the agency’s recent order extending the Eddystone plant’s operation, “a prudent, time-limited step.”

Constellation, which emphasizes its role in accelerating a transition to a clean energy economy, said it’s working with the DOE and PJM “to meet the need for power at this critical time when America must win the AI race.” 

Constellation and PJM did not respond to questions about the cost of keeping the Eddystone plant operational.

Wannier, the Sierra Club attorney, said because Eddystone and Campbell’s retirements were already planned, the plants were not part of the auction processes  their respective grid operators used to establish the prices for generating capacity. 

Jon Gordon, director of the electricity industry group Advanced Energy United, said that puts their owners in an advantageous position to negotiate an agreement to be ready to run when needed.

“It’s really the most expensive way to meet resource needs for ratepayers,” Gordon said.

As a result, PJM has negotiated its own deals with power plant operators to keep older plants online to meet capacity demands. In January it reached an agreement with Talen Energy to operate two Maryland oil- and natural gas-fired plants past their retirement dates. 

Gordon, of Advanced Energy United, said on-demand generation saved the day during heatwaves this summer. Gleason, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, said coal fired generation more than doubled from 14.5 gigawatts to 31 gigawatts.

From the industry’s perspective, Gordon said, the concern about future capacity is a problem of PJM’s own making.

“PJM has just utterly failed in this process to get new projects online,” Gordon said.

The queue for new projects has been closed since 2022. While FERC has ordered PJM to make changes to make the process faster and more transparent, nearly 9,300 requests are pending, mostly for renewable energy sources, according to the utility information tracking website interconnection.fyi.

Electricity customers in PJM’s territory saw their electric bills spike this summer as a result of the tightening market. Gov. Josh Shapiro filed a complaint with FERC late last year claiming the higher costs were unjustified because new projects would not come online in time to meet the demand. It resulted in a settlement that capped the rate for this past summer’s auction, but prices still jumped nearly 22%.

Gordon said that’s a clear economic signal for producers to build new power plants, solar and wind farms and battery storage facilities. But the Trump administration’s energy policy, including a permitting freeze, elimination of tax credits and stop-work orders for wind projects, is getting in the way, he said.

“You have this administration striking down wind to keep these plants running,” Gordon said, “which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

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