What would a Trump 2.0 ‘energy emergency’ look like? History offers clues.

The White House had an idea for how to stop America ’s aging coal and nuclear plants from closing: Call the closures a threat to national security.

Under the 2018 plan, the Department of Energy would declare an “emergency” and order utilities to buy two years ’ worth of power from coal, nuclear generators most at risk of shutting down.

Free market Republicans saw the rescue plan as just the kind of heavy-handed federal intrusion they stood against.

The full exercise of presidential power over the electric power, gas, coal and oil sectors did not come into Roosevelt ’s control until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor , launching the U.S. into World War II .

Short of war, however, the law gives the president executive authority to intervene in the energy economy under other scenarios.

Section 202(c) explicitly mentions wartime emergencies, but its limits are unclear.

The EPA has adopted the Federal Power Act section as a safety valve that could keep some fossil plants open to assure grid reliability.

“Climate change and the ongoing energy transition, by disrupting the way the electrical grid has historically operated, will ratchet up the pressure” for its use.