The Plain Dealer reported that "A growing chorus of opponents are condemning the maneuver by FirstEnergy Solutions Thursday to convince the U.S. Department of Energy that an electrical supply emergency exists in Ohio and 12 other states.
"The emergency, wrote the power plant company in a formal application to the DOE, is that the regional high-voltage power grid could become unstable if the company shuts down its three nuclear power plants over the next three years, as it threatened Wednesday..."
The story included a roundup of a broad range of industry, trade and environmental group criticism of this move, including AEE's:
From the national business group Advanced Energy Economy: "FirstEnergy's request attempts to short-circuit PJM's well-established process for analyzing the reliability impacts of generation retirements, and ignores FERC's ruling earlier this year finding that no emergency exists that would justify providing special treatment to coal and nuclear power plants in our competitive electricity markets. We fully expect Secretary Perry to reject this application," said Malcolm Woolf, senior vice president of policy.
See The Plain Dealer story here and related update from RTO Insider