Trump’s Energy Emergency Orders Should Prevent Morgan Stanley’s Electricity Exports
In a formal protest filed today with the U.S. Department of Energy, Public Citizen challenged an application to export electricity by the Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley.
Federal law mandates that “no person shall transmit any electric energy from the United States to a foreign country . . . [if] it finds that the proposed transmission would impair the sufficiency of electric supply within the United States.”
In the filing, Public Citizen argues that the Department of Energy’s repeated emergency declarations under Section 202c of the Federal Power Act—including the December 16 command to keep TransAlta’s coal-fired Centralia Generating Station in Washington State operating beyond its planned retirement—explicitly claim electricity shortages exist across the country that constitute a national energy emergency.
Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, issued the following statement:
“President Trump’s Secretary of Energy has a choice to make—keep forcing working families to pay higher electricity bills through his emergency bailouts of fossil fuel power plants or prioritize power exports for Wall Street banks. Either way, Trump’s failed energy policies have exacerbated America’s energy affordability crisis and exposed his campaign promise to slash America’s utility bills in half as a lie.”