Last Monday, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a sweeping emergency order under the Federal Power Act, allowing the Wagner Generating Station in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to continue producing electricity, despite having nearly exhausted its annual limit on fuel oil usage under state environmental law.

This order, requested by PJM Interconnection, one of the nation’s largest grid operators, authorizes the operation of Wagner Unit 4 in exceedance of its 438 hour per year fuel oil combustion cap imposed by a consent order with the Maryland Department of the Environment. The decision underscores the rapidly escalating tension between Maryland’s ambitious climate targets and the urgent reliability needs of the national electric grids.

Legal Emergency Meets Environmental Limits

The legal foundation for the Department of Energy’s action is Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, which grants the Secretary of Energy broad discretion to direct the operation of electric generation facilities during energy emergencies. DOE Secretary Chris Wright made clear that the Trump Administration views this emergency as a matter of national energy security, citing the risk of power shortages in Maryland and across the 13 state PJM region, which stretches from Illinois to New Jersey and serves more than 65 million customers.

At the core of the issue is the Wagner Generating Station, a legacy coal converted to oil fired facility operated by Talen Energy. The plant is already slated for retirement, originally planned for 2025, and now extended to 2029. As of July 21, Wagner Unit 4 had only 80 operational hours remaining under its state air quality consent order. MDE had previously found Wagner to be a “significant source of local air pollution,” justifying its strict cap.

But now, with PJM warning of “growing resource adequacy concerns,” the U.S. Department of Energy is overriding that state imposed cap.

A Clash of Laws: Federal Emergency vs. State Climate Mandate

This order is not just about keeping the lights on. It is a bold and unapologetic assertion of federal supremacy over bad state environmental regulations, including those implementing Maryland’s Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022, which mandates a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels by 2031, the most aggressive near term emissions reduction target in the country.

Simply put: you cannot burn more oil in state while reducing GHG emissions in state, at least not without unintended consequences. Maryland already imports over 40% of the electricity it consumes, a figure that is rising. If we don’t produce more electricity in state, but still demand more energy, emissions reductions goals may be met on paper, while emissions from imported electricity rise. We will simply be exporting our pollution to neighboring states and importing utility higher rates.

This is the inconvenient truth of climate policy and grid reliability. Maryland’s energy trajectory, driven by climate legislation, is increasingly at odds with operational reality.

A Warning from the Grid: Reliability Risks Rising

The emergency DOE order is supported by DOE’s own Resource Adequacy Report, which paints a dire picture. If current fossil fuel plant retirements proceed without sufficient replacement generation, especially dispatchable resources like natural gas or oil, the nation faces “unacceptable reliability risks within five years.” This finding was among the rationales for President Trump’s January 20, 2025 Executive Order 14156, declaring a national energy emergency.

That report, along with PJM’s own 2023 analysis, confirms what many have feared: the transition to a cleaner grid is outpacing the infrastructure, policy, and market reforms necessary to make it work without risking blackouts, brownouts, and unaffordable prices.

Because it is 2025, court challenges are already underway over a similar Michigan order keeping a coal fired plant online beyond its planned shutdown, where several groups allege DOE “abused its authority” to prop up fossil infrastructure under the guise of emergency operations.

What This Means for Maryland

The implications for Marylanders are profound. BG&E customers, already grappling with elevated bills, could see costs rise further from increased use of peaker plants like Wagner, plants that are expensive to run, carbon intensive, and disproportionately impact local air quality. At the same time, this order exposes the limits of Maryland’s statutory ambition to decarbonize swiftly and unilaterally in the context of a shared regional power grid.

We’ve previously blogged Maryland Needs to Produce More Electricity. The Wagner order makes clear: importing electricity may reduce local emissions, but it does not absolve us of responsibility for energy reliability or PJM system wide emissions impacts.

Inexplicably, in an unrelated proceeding on 30 days before this emergency order, the Maryland Public Service Commission argued the DOE exceeded its authority to keep the Eddystone power plant near Philadelphia available after its planned retirement, including because there were no reliability concerns and no emergency to be addressed in the PJM grid?

Troubling to many is that Maryland has no viable strategy for generating the state’s needed electricity.

The Way Forward: Policy Alignment and Infrastructure Investment

As an environmental attorney, I find the situation both frustrating and illuminating. It is yet another example of the disconnect between blue state level climate action and federal energy reliability mandates. That gap must close, and quickly.

This is not a choice between dirty energy and no lights. Rather, it is a call to accelerate investments in dispatchable power; modernize transmission infrastructure, and align regulatory frameworks at every level of government. State rules, like in Maryland that mandate shutting down fossil fuel power plants without replacing the power generation are bad public policy. We cannot afford to let the right hand of energy policy ignore what the left hand of climate policy is doing.

The immediate response we saw in our office to this federal order was inquiries from businesses looking into battery energy storage systems as a solution to enhance the reliability of the electric power grid and ensure business continuity.

Conclusion

The emergency order from Secretary Chris Wright is no doubt legally sound and operationally necessary, but it is environmentally regrettable, and it should serve as a wake up call. Maryland cannot meet its climate goals by regulation alone, nor can the state continue at this time of increasing power demand growth, to lean so heavily on a grid we don’t fully control.

Maryland must urgently invest in energy, diversify our in state generation portfolio, and prepare for the hard conversations about tradeoffs that lie ahead. Because if the state doesn’t, emergency orders like this one will become the norm, not the exception.