By Joe Barrett and Jennifer Hiller

PORT SHELDON TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- The sprawling coal-fired power plant that has stood here on the shores of Lake Michigan since the 1960s was days away from shutting down in May.

Most workers had either retired or been reassigned, and the town even held farewell tours of the facility, known as the J.H. Campbell Complex.

Then the Trump administration ordered it to remain open.

This community, about 35 miles west of Grand Rapids, is now Exhibit A for a new Trump administration strategy: ordering fossil-fuel power plants slated for closure to keep operating.

President Trump this year declared a grid-reliability emergency, citing surging electricity demand for artificial intelligence and new manufacturing. The Energy Department ordered the Campbell plant to stay open, along with another in Pennsylvania. Industry experts expect more such orders.

"We are going to stop closing existing, reliable power plants that are essential to our grid, and we are going to bring some common sense back, " Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last month on Fox Business.

Now the Campbell plant sits in limbo: Keeping it open has cost $80 million through Sept. 30, or about $615,000 a day, its owner said recently. But closing it would require overturning an emergency order. The situation has plunged the heavily Republican area -- in deeply divided Michigan -- into an unusual debate.

On one side stand homeowners, environmental groups and Michigan's attorney general. They are fighting to rescind the order and shut down the plant for good.

"Everybody we talked to, Republican and Democrat, were glad it was closing," said Susan Hoekema, a retired attorney who has lived about 3 miles from the plant since 2006 -- and recalls black soot covering her windowsills. "It's kind of seen as a dinosaur around here."

A group called Save the Campbell represents the opposition. They want a new local entity to take over the plant and use it to attract a data center instead of demolishing it.

"I just don't get it at a time that we need more electric," said Joseph McCarter, an accountant who founded the group. He took an interest in energy policy after initially chuckling when he heard the president talk about "clean, beautiful coal" in 2020.

McCarter is now a convert. "I think people have just gotten a terrible misunderstanding of coal, given that each of its negatives can be economically addressed," he said. "I think it's gotten a bad rap."

Retirement planning

Hundreds of coal plants have shut down in recent years, especially in competitive markets where coal has struggled to compete with cheaper natural gas.

Consumers Energy, a CMS Energy subsidiary and majority owner of the Campbell plant, had planned to replace Campbell's power generation with its 2023 purchase of a natural gas-fired plant and by relying on renewable projects.

Attracting a data center to a coal plant could be a tough sell , though the infrastructure that connects to the power grid is valuable. Former coal plants have been converted to gas, solar or battery projects or could be tapped by data centers. The tech industry typically has paired up directly with renewable-power projects, and more recently natural gas and nuclear plants.

Consumers Energy Chief Executive Garrick Rochow told investors recently that Campbell has a flexible, committed workforce and that more federal orders to keep it running are likely. "We expect those to continue for the long-term, and we're prepared to continue to operate the plant and comply with those orders," he said.

Keeping aging fossil-fuel plants open could cost U.S. consumers more than $3 billion annually, according to estimates from a report by Grid Strategies, a power-sector consulting firm.

The report, done on behalf of environmental groups fighting the DOE order, also flags the risk that other old and unprofitable power plants could threaten retirement in hopes of being ordered to remain online. Such orders would shift operating and maintenance costs to consumers through utility bills.

"It creates this really perverse incentive for every plant to claim they want to retire," said Michael Goggin, executive vice president of Grid Strategies.

The cost to keep the Campbell plant operating will be paid by customers in the same grid system from as far away as North Dakota, Montana, southern Missouri and Kentucky under a cost-recovery ruling from federal regulators.

So far the only other plant ordered to continue operating is Constellation Energy's Eddystone plant in Pennsylvania, which the company had planned to retire because it was expected to lose money.

'A ton of liability'

The Campbell plant stretches over 2,000 acres in a largely rural section of Ottawa County, population 300,000, which also includes Grand Rapids suburbs, lakefront communities and the tourist town of Holland, with its historic windmill, stepped facades and tulip festival.

The county voted for Trump by a 20-point margin in 2024. But a more moderate Republican majority rose on the county board -- one that hasn't always marched in lockstep with the administration. They rejected explicit anti-DEI language in a recent employment contract and dropped the previous board's county motto, "Where Freedom Rings," calling it too divisive. (Before that, the motto was "Where You Belong.")

Despite appeals from both sides of the Campbell plant debate, the board has largely stayed on the sidelines.

In Port Sheldon, the township where Campbell sits, there was little disagreement over plans to close the aging facility, said township supervisor Michael A. Sabatino.

The plant, which could service up to one million people when all three units were online, was once the township's largest taxpayer. As development elsewhere took off, Campbell now represents less than 10% of the local tax base, Sabatino said.

Initially, questions arose about whether losing the plant would hamper the area's access to power. "A lot of that comes from not fully understanding that we're not connected directly to that plant with a cord -- that we're part of this larger grid," he said.

McCarter, founder of Save the Campbell, says the grid requires a balance of reliable sources. "There's a reason why it's a combination of coal and gas," he said.

After the Trump administration ordered the plant to remain open, McCarter called for a local co-op, assisted by the county, to take over the plant and bring in a data center to help finance it. So far, Ottawa County hasn't acted on that -- although McCarter has won over several townships.

Jim Barry, a county board member whose district includes Port Sheldon, sees problems. "You've got an aging production facility, you've got legacy environmental issues from coal ash on site," he said. "Whatever authority that would take over something like this is assuming a ton of liability."

Gary Veldink, a Georgetown Township trustee, said he thinks a closure is shortsighted. "We're not ready to get rid of it yet," he said. "There's nothing that can replace that."

Veldink has agreed to join an exploratory committee to examine options for the plant, including attracting a data center, though he's unsure of the best path forward. "There are a lot of unanswered questions," he said.

The Energy Department in August extended its order to keep the plant open for another 90 days, through Nov. 19.

Write to Joe Barrett at Joseph.Barrett@wsj.com and Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 03, 2025 13:05 ET (18:05 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.