On September 25, 2025, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, and the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel filed a petition for review challenging the U.S. Department of Energy ‘s (DOE) arbitrary and illegal order forcing the continued operation of the Eddystone Generating Station (Eddystone), a power plant near Pennsylvania, under the pretense of a fabricated energy emergency.   

The operating units at Eddystone run on oil or gas and were built at least 50 years ago (1974 and 1976). They were slated to be closed on May 31, before the DOE issued its order mandating PJM Interconnection, the power grid operator, and Constellation Energy, the owner of the plant, to keep them open for another 90 days. Constellation Energy notified PJM of its plan to retire the two 380-megawatt fossil-fuel units at Eddystone on May 31, 2025, because the “continued operation of these [Eddystone] units is expected to be uneconomic.” In February 2024, PJM told Constellation that deactivating the units would cause “no reliability violations” and that it could retire the units “sooner if desired.” 

Despite these plans, DOE issued an order in May 2025 that claimed that “an emergency exists in portions of the electricity grid operated by PJM Interconnection, LLC due to a shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy” and ordered PJM and Constellation Energy to “take all measures to ensure that Eddystone Units are available to operate.” 

Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act gives the DOE secretary authority to take temporary control of the nation’s electricity system during emergency situations. Until now, that authority has predominantly been invoked during wartime or natural disasters. Each of the entities responsible for ensuring reliability in the region—including the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and PJM Interconnection, LLC—determined that the Eddystone units are not needed to address reliability concerns, and so there was no emergency to be addressed and no need to charge ratepayers to keep the plants running.  

The plaintiffs challenge would have the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the unlawful order.