The Department of Energy (DOE) has issued its fifth 202(c) emergency order this year, directing PJM Interconnection to override environmental limits and dispatch an oil-fired power generating unit in Maryland strictly as needed to avert possible blackouts in the Baltimore region.
The July 28 order, issued under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, authorizes PJM to operate the 397-MW Wagner 4 at Talen Energy’s Herbert A. Wagner Generating Station in Anne Arundel County beyond its environmental run cap only when it determines—based on real-time or forecasted reliability threats—that the additional generation is necessary to meet load and maintain system security.
The DOE’s emergency order takes immediate effect and will remain in force for 90 days, through October 26, 2025. It covers a critical late-summer and early-autumn period when extreme heat and high demand could test grid reliability in the Mid-Atlantic.
Under the order, PJM may direct Wagner Unit 4 to run beyond its Clean Air Act–based limit of 438 operating hours per year, but only during declared reliability emergencies—such as a Maximum Generation Alert or a Transmission Security Emergency—or when system modeling shows imminent risk to reliable service in the Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) zone. Once PJM deems the emergency over and grid conditions stabilize, Wagner 4 must cease operations above its permit limit and return to standard compliance, the DOE said.
DOE Grants 90-Day Emergency Waiver to Prevent Baltimore Reliability Shortfalls
Talen’s Herbert A. Wagner Generating Station notably comprises Wagner 4, built in 1972, a 397-MWe oil-fired unit; Wagner 3, a 1966-completed 359-MWe coal-fired unit that Talen converted to run on fuel oil at the end of 2023; and Wagner 1, a 133-MWe coal-fired unit built in the 1950s. It also hosts a 13-MW gas-fired combustion turbine, which can serve as a peaking unit. Talen retired Wagner 2, a 136-MW coal-fired unit, in 2020.
The DOE’s emergency order stems from a Section 202 (c) “Request for Emergency Order” petition formally filed by PJM on July 21. In its petition, PJM asked the DOE to override a Clean Air Act limit imposed by Maryland’s State Implementation Plan (SIP), which restricts Wagner Unit 4 to 438 hours of fuel oil operation per calendar year (and limits its SO2 emissions to 1,350 pounds per hour). The restrictions were established in a 2020 consent order between Talen subsidiary Raven Power Ft. Smallwood and the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), and submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of Maryland’s SIP, which is designed to help bring the Anne Arundel–Baltimore County “Wagner” nonattainment area into compliance with the 1-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for SO₂.
In 2023, citing unfavorable economics, tightening emissions rules, and Maryland’s climate mandates, Talen moved to retire Wagner 4 (as well as the adjacent Wagner 1 and 3 units and the nearby coal-fired 1,370-MW Brandon Shores coal plant) by June 1, 2025. The company formally notified PJM of its intent to deactivate all four units on October 2023, in keeping with a 2020 legal agreement with the Sierra Club and the Maryland Department of the Environment. At the time, Talen said the plants faced declining margins, low capacity prices, and mounting regulatory risk, including exposure to PJM’s capacity performance penalties. As POWER reported, PJM responded by urging Talen to delay its deactivation of two Wagner units until transmission upgrades were put into service around 2028.
But after conducting a detailed reliability review, PJM concluded in January 2024 that the deactivation of Wagner Units 3 and 4 could create serious voltage and contingency violations in the BGE transmission zone. In particular, it deemed Wagner 4 essential to maintaining voltage stability and preventing thermal overloads under contingency conditions. PJM warned that, absent the plant, firm load in Baltimore could face blackouts during high demand or constrained grid conditions. To preserve system security, PJM initiated a Reliability Must Run (RMR) process.
Talen reached an RMR settlement with PJM, Maryland regulators, consumer advocates and environmental groups in January 2025, and FERC approved the settlement in May 2025 (Docket ER24-1787/1787-001). The agreement allows Wagner 4 and the Brandon Shores units to remain operational through May 2029 under fixed cost-of-service payments—$137/MW-day for Wagner, plus performance incentives totaling $2.5 million per year. Under the deal, Wagner 4 is exempt from capacity market obligations but remains fully available for emergency dispatch when PJM declares a capacity or transmission reliability event.
Wagner 4 Only Has 80 Fuel Oil Burning Hours Left for 2025
However, in its request to the DOE earlier this week, PJM noted that under the FERC-approved settlement agreement, Wagner 4 has a minimum downtime of 24 hours, a minimum run time of 24 hours, only one maximum daily start, and only three maximum weekly starts. As direly, as of July 2025, Wagner 4 only has 80 fuel oil burning hours remaining before exceeding its operating limit—which translates to about four days of operation, PJM underscored.
PJM urged the DOE to intervene, noting its 2025 operations continue to heavily rely upon the unit. “There were, for example, 11 instances where Wagner Unit 4 ran in January to support high loads, including the new all-time PJM winter peak. PJM also ran the unit once in early June and ran the unit again for 100 hours over the 5 day extreme heat event during the week of June 23, 2025,” it wrote.
“For the remainder of 2025, PJM anticipates the continued need to schedule Wagner Unit 4 in order to maintain reliable system operations during projected peak demand (in the case of declared or anticipated Maximum Generation Emergency Alerts) and/or increased flows on transmission facilities that are required to serve the BG&E Zone (in the case of Transmission Security Emergencies). Indeed, if another heatwave like the late June heatwave were to reoccur, there are insufficient run hours remaining because of the Operating Limit on Wagner Unit 4.”
PJM in its request said Talen, the owner and operator of the unit, “does not oppose this request and will operate Wagner Unit 4 in accordance with an emergency order issued by the Secretary and the Settlement Agreement approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.” It also stressed that while it has moved to modify the operating limit for Wagner 4, it has been unable to do so.
“PJM has reviewed this request with the Maryland Department of the Environment (‘MDE’) which indicated, without opining on the reliability issues that give rise to this application, that it is unable to provide the short term relief sought by this application as any modifications would require amendment to the existing Maryland State Implementation Plan,” the request reads.
The DOE on Monday granted PJM’s request, citing PJM’s critical responsibility to ensure maximum reliability on its system—as well as PJM’s ability to identify and dispatch generation to meet load requirements. “This order reduces the threat of power outages during peak demand conditions for millions of Americans,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright on Monday. “The Trump Administration remains committed to swiftly deploying all available tools and authorities to safeguard the reliability, affordability, and security of the nation’s energy system.”
Federal Reliability Actions Accelerate Amid Surging Demand and Resource Retirements
The Wagner 4 directive marks the fifth Section 202(c) emergency order issued by the Trump administration this year.
As POWER has reported, the string of reliability-driven orders began on May 16, when DOE issued two emergency directives to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA): one to dispatch over 50 generation units and another to accelerate vegetation clearing after multiple island-wide blackouts. On May 23, DOE ordered MISO and Consumers Energy to delay the closure of Michigan’s J.H. Campbell coal plant to preserve reserve margins during the summer peak. A week later, on May 30, the DOE directed PJM and Constellation Energy to keep Eddystone units in Pennsylvania online past their retirement dates. On June 24, DOE authorized Duke Energy Carolinas to operate multiple generators at maximum output during an extreme heat wave.
The emergency order reflects broader reliability challenges across North America’s power system. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC’s) 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment warned that several regions face elevated risk of energy shortfalls during extreme weather. While substantial resource additions, particularly solar and battery storage, have improved overall resource adequacy for normal conditions, extreme weather continues to present a “hyper-complex” risk environment where coinciding demand spikes, resource variability, and transmission bottlenecks can converge to stress grid reliability, NERC said.
PJM, for its part, has consistently voiced “growing resource adequacy concern” owing to the confluence of load growth, dispatchable resource retirements, and delays in new generation interconnection. In recent assessments, PJM has highlighted increasing reliability risks stemming from timing mismatches between resource retirements, load growth, and the pace of new generation entry.
PJM’s 2026/2027 Base Residual Auction, whose results it published on July 22, notably cleared at an unprecedented $329.17/MW-day—the maximum price allowed under new FERC rules—highlighting severe reliability concerns and a tightening supply-demand balance across the its 13-state footprint. The auction secured just 139 MW above PJM’s target, stressing razor-thin reserve margins as the grid operator readies for surging demand from data centers and industrial growth. While some experts blamed the price spike on accelerating load growth, others pointed to structural interconnection delays and a policy disconnect between clean energy ambitions and grid reliability. As expected, the auction’s outcome has triggered debates over market design, permitting reform, and how to maintain affordability as capacity shortfalls loom.
On July 7, meanwhile, the DOE put out its Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security, a sweeping federal assessment required under Executive Order 14262, President Trump’s bid to strengthen grid reliability and security. The report’s key contribution is to introduce a uniform methodology to identify at-risk regions and guide federal reliability interventions, including emergency actions under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act.
However, its findings are notable. If current resource trends continue—including 104 GW of firm generation retirements and inadequate firm replacement—most U.S. regions will face reliability risks by 2030, it projects. “The 104 GW of retirements are projected to be replaced by 209 GW of new generation by 2030; however, only 22 GW would come from firm baseload generation sources. Even assuming no retirements, the model found increased risk of outages in 2030 by a factor of 34,” it says.
The report calls for a renewed emphasis on firm generation, modernization of resource adequacy metrics, and immediate planning reforms to keep pace with explosive load growth from AI, reindustrialization, and electrification.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
