Company urges Perry to save nuclear and coal plants

WASHINGTON — Ohio power company FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. asked Energy Secretary Rick Perry late last week to issue an emergency order to stop coal and nuclear plants from closing in a region stretching from the Mid-Atlantic to the Southeast to the Midwest.

Coal and nuclear plants operating in the grid managed by PJM Interconnection have struggled in a power market awash in cheap natural gas and a rush of solar and wind farms. FirstEnergy, which said it planned to close two nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania within the next three years, is asking the Energy Department to order PJM to compensate coal and nuclear plant owners “for the full benefits they provide to energy markets and the public at large.”

A spokeswoman said the Energy Department had received the company’s application for an emergency order and and added that it would “go through our standard review process.”

Last year, Perry asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to raise electricity prices paid to coal and nuclear plants, a request FERC rejected. That proposal would have benefited power companies in just three of the nation’s dozens of electrical markets.

One of those markets was PJM, where FirstEnergy operates four coal and at least three nuclear plants. Without action by Perry, FirstEnergy President Donald Schneider said, those plants would close, threatening the stability of a power grid that serves some 65 million people.

Environmentalists dismissed the plea as little more than a bailout for an industry facing an uncertain future.