Amid an extreme heat wave, the U.S. Department of Energy last week an emergency order allowing Duke Energy to temporarily suspend certain environmental requirements at some of its power plants in the Carolinas to prevent potential grid failures.
The order came after Duke Energy customers in North and South Carolina to use less electricity to reduce stress on the power grid and help prevent power outages.
“This power under the Federal Power Act is an emergency power. It’s been around since the ’30s. The original intent was for wartime and to keep the lights on when there’s scarcity,†said Nick Guidi, a senior attorney at Southern Environmental Law Center, noting the rarity of the event.
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“It allows a certain specified list of power plants to exceed their emissions limits. Usually this means that they’re operating longer in more hours than they’re normally allowed to, just based on environmental limitations … so [the order is] environmentally significant and definitely not something you want to see a lot.â€
Initially enacted in 1920 as the Federal Water Power Act and amended in 1935 into what is now the Federal Power Act, the allows the government to order temporary actions to best serve the public interest during wartime or when it determines that an emergency threatens electric reliability.
Requested by Duke Energy on June 23 and issued by Energy Secretary Chris Wright on June 24, the order was to remain in effect until the night of June 25. In the order statement, Wright recognized that the Carolinas were facing a shortage of electricity, limited generation capacity, and extreme heat, concluding that the order was necessary to protect grid reliability and serve the public interest.
A Duke Energy spokesperson said the emergency request was made just to be safe, and that none of their power plants actually had to go beyond environmental limits during the week.
“Due to the predicted extremely high loads early this week, Duke Energy took additional precautionary measures by requesting an order from the Department of Energy that would allow power generating units within Duke Energy Carolina’s service territory to operate up to their maximum generation output levels, if needed, and quickly respond if conditions change,†the spokesperson said.
In a released after the emergency energy order was lifted, the utility said it set a new summer electricity usage record on June 24 in the Carolinas, surpassing the previous record set last year.
“The issue here is a triple digit heat wave that lasted for three days. That’s going to become a lot more commonplace as climate change accelerates,†Guidi said.
The more Duke and other utilities diversify their energy mix with renewables like solar, battery storage, offshore wind, and stronger regional transmission, the less they’ll need to over-rely on fossil fuel plants especially during extreme weather events, he said, pointing out that Tuesday’s emergency order only fossil-fueled units, including gas, oil, and one coal plant, to exceed environmental limits.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration issued emergency orders under the Federal Power Act that lasted as long as 90 days, the maximum length for a single issuance. The Department of Energy an order in May to keep a coal plant in Michigan running just a week before it was scheduled to retire, and the same month for a gas plant in the PJM region that was set to shut down only days later.
Those cases, which Guidi described as a “clear abuse†of the emergency power, were quite different from the situation in the Carolinas, which he described as more conventional and time-limited.
