The Trump administration, citing an “energy emergency” in progress, has once again saddle a community already overloaded by pollution with a powerful and obsolete power plant which it does not want or does not need. The decision confused residents and defenders of environmental justice, who qualified the move an abuse of federal law and an opportunity lost to improve the air quality of the region.
The Ministry of Energy issued what is called an emergency order “stay open” for the Energy Constellation gas power plant in Eddystone, Pennsylvania on August 27. This is the second time that the agency has taken this stage, and has been equivalent to an extraordinary and unprecedented use ”of the Federal Power Act, said Robert Routh of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The NRDC, as well as the Sierra Club, Pennfuture and several other environmental groups, question the decision. Open emergency stay orders have already been reserved for war conditions or natural disasters, said Roth, who is the policies director of Pennsylvania for the organization. “This is an abuse of an extraordinary authority reserved for emergency situations,” he said, noting that the short-term need for increased electricity cited by the administration in the defense of this decision would not justify the opening of the establishment. “They agree with the emergency situation in order to justify keeping a dirty fossil factory online after its retirement date.”
Eddystone is just outside Philadelphia, at the head of an industrial corridor of 12 miles which extends to the city of Marcus Hook and is generally considered to be one of the most toxic areas of the State. Today, it houses a myriad of dangerous industries, including the largest incinerator, chemical factories and country refineries. Infantile asthma levels in the region are four times the national average, and the rates of certain forms of cancer are more than 1,000 times higher.
The Energy constellation gas plant in Eddystone began operating in the early 1960s and currently providing around 782 megawatts in the surrounding region. He has only worked sporadically in recent years, largely because it was simply not economical to function in a coherent way. According to the environmental protection agency, it issued 23,102 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, 16 tonnes of methaneand 31 tonnes of nitrous oxide. The PJM grid operator approved the constellation stop request for the factory in December 2023 after finding that the closure would not have had a negative impact on the grid, and the installation was to close on May 31. But, one day before closing, the Ministry of Energy or the DOE, the factory ordered to continue to work. The agency re -fell this order during its expiration last week.
Although environmental defenders argue that the emergency order is a manufactured crisis, the DOE cited summer heat waves as justification to keep the factory open, noting that the “Eddystone units were called by PJM to produce electricity during heat waves that hit the region in June and July”. The grid operator did not respond when asked if the factory closed breakdowns – something that would not have been taken into account in its decision to approve the closure of the installation, because PJM cannot refuse a closure only for these reasons. But PJM said that he had supported the extension of the emergency order. Constellation Energy underlined the rapid expansion of data centers feeding artificial intelligence, saying that it “continues to work with the Ministry of Energy and the PJM to take emergency measures to meet the need to be able to at this critical moment when America must win the AI race”.
In July, Trump and Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick announced that the private sector had promised funding of $ 90 billion to transform Pennsylvania into a data centers. This has aroused concerns of environmental defenders, who fear that the promise of the investment of companies providing a practical excuse to extend the life of oil and liquid natural gas in order to produce electricity for hypothetical data centers.
“We have not yet seen this requirement that everyone speaks in data centers,” said Jessica O’Neill, a lawyer managed at Pennfure, a non -profit organization of environmental advocacy. “In Pennsylvania, we just seem to come across ourselves, again and again, to attract a new industry.” Her concern, she explained, was that the State to build speculative gas factories or prolong the lifespan of aging factories at the service of an industry that could never materialize.
When the constellation stop request was approved almost two years ago, the network operator noted that closing the factory would cause “no violation of reliability” or leave the region in danger of panic. Routh and O’Neill noted that the PJM interconnection crisis had left many renewable energy projects in the limbo while they are waiting to be brought to the grid. Despite the disastrous warnings of the administration of an energy emergency, he decided to aggressively close the renewable energy projects which would provide more electricity.
“I personally think that it is interesting to justify the open order of the stay on the grounds that there is an energy emergency, because it has not been shown that it is the case,” said Lauren Minsky, medical historian and environmental health teacher at the Haverford College. “And what is clearly is a public health emergency.” As part of his work, Minsky followed community cancer rates in the industrial section between Eddystone and Marcus Hook. Pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma in Eddystone are 1,051% higher than the national average; Young uterine cancer rates are higher by 1,813%.
The open emergency order will probably increase taxpayers’ costs, said Roth. Because the order returned one day before the factory retired, the energy of Constellation had to suddenly order an enormous amount of fuel and to tackle the delayed interview that he did not expect to cope. “These costs will be transferred to taxpayers,” said Routh. “While this plant would not have worked otherwise. This is an unprecedented use of this authority, and this is done in a way that does not make sense even in front.”
A previous version of this article indicated that the Clean Air Council had joined the legal challenge of the open emergency order. The clean air Task Force, representing Pennfuture, had signed. He also said that Constellation’s energy has “blamed” the rapid expansion of data centers feeding artificial intelligence. The article has been updated to reflect this constellation energy “indicated” the rapid expansion of data centers, as a reason to keep the open eddystone factory.
