On Saturday, power corporation FirstEnergy placed its coal and nuclear generation units under chapter 11 bankruptcy. Although coal and nuclear plants across the country have struggled to compete with the low prices of natural gas, FirstEnergy's filing is unique because it stands to take on a political dimension. Just two days before FirstEnergy's bankruptcy filing, the company petitioned the Department of Energy (DOE) for an emergency bailout, citing concerns about reliability.

The petition could reinvigorate a debate started by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who proposed a rule last year to change how coal and nuclear plants are compensated for their power. The rule was denied by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which said that there was not enough evidence to justify changing how coal and nuclear are compensated.

FirstEnergy disparaged FERC's decision in its Thursday petition (PDF), claiming that "as a result of FERC’s and the RTO's [Regional Transmission Organization's] failure to address this crisis, swift and decisive action is needed now to address this imminent loss of nuclear and coal-fired baseload generation and the threat to the electric grid that this loss poses" (emphasis FirstEnergy's).

The Trump administration campaigned on bringing back coal, despite the fact that it's a major contributor to climate change. Trump and his appointees have repeated misinformation about climate change science throughout their time in office. But coal's struggles at this point have little to do with climate change regulation from the government and more to do with higher costs than natural gas in many places around the country. That has left coal companies to argue that their electricity is more reliable and therefore more valuable than other forms of electricity.

Mirroring Perry's language

In FirstEnergy's Thursday petition, it asked the DOE to require East Coast grid manager PJM to buy power from its coal and nuclear plants and to have PJM compensate those plants for "the full benefits they provide to energy markets and the public at large." That language mirrors the language of the rule Perry proposed in 2017, which would have allowed any coal or nuclear plant with more than 90 days of fuel onsite to seek “full recovery of costs.”