A coalition of environmental groups and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser filed separate petitions with the Department of Energy Wednesday, challenging an “emergency” order to extend the operation of a northwest Colorado coal plant scheduled to be retired last month.

Located in Moffat County, Craig Generating Station’s 446-megawatt Unit 1 had been scheduled to go offline Dec. 31. But the emergency federal order, issued just one day before the planned closure, required the plant to remain operational — an outcome that its co-owner and operator, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, says will raise costs for utility customers across the state.

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In their motion to intervene and stay the order, five environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and GreenLatinos, called it “costly, harmful, unnecessary, unwanted, and unlawful.”

“There is no energy emergency here; only political interference in Coloradans’ environmental progress that will raise bills and worsen pollution,” Ean Thomas Tafoya, vice president of state programs for GreenLatinos, said in a press release.

The environmental groups said they plan to file a lawsuit against the Energy Department if it doesn’t take action within 30 days.

In a brief statement, a department spokesperson did not address the substance of Colorado’s requests but said the administration is “committed to preventing the premature retirement of baseload power plants and building as much reliable, dispatchable generation as possible to achieve energy dominance.”

The department’s Dec. 30 order, signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former Denver oil executive, cites the “national energy emergency” declared by President Donald Trump shortly after taking office last year, in an executive order blasted by environmental advocates as a pretext for advancing the interests of fossil-fuel companies.

The order requires Tri-State to “take all measures necessary to ensure that Craig Unit 1 is available to operate” for another 90 days. The administration’s critics anticipate that the order will continue to be renewed every 90 days under the authority granted to the department by the Federal Power Act, and similar orders have been issued to coal plants in Indiana and Washington.

An analysis released in December by the Sierra Club estimated that keeping Craig’s Unit 1 open for 90 days would cost ratepayers at least $20 million. Annual costs could be raised by $85 million to $150 million.

Wind, solar generation blocked

Despite the emergency declaration’s stated concerns about “insufficient energy production,” the Trump administration has continued to cancel and delay major wind and solar projects.

Colorado’s request to the department to rescind the order, filed Wednesday by Weiser’s office, called it a “transparent attempt to favor the Trump administration’s preferred energy source.”

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“At the same time the Department is claiming that an energy emergency justifies exercise of … its emergency authority, it is also working to stymie development of renewable generation sources, particularly wind and solar,” Weiser’s motion says.

Colorado has secured commitments from all of the state’s remaining coal plants to close by the end of 2030 to meet its climate change goals. But the decision to retire Craig Unit 1 was made in 2016 — predating the ambitious clean-energy agenda in the electric sector pursued by Governor Jared Polis’ administration and Democratic lawmakers over the last seven years.

Tri-State and Colorado utility regulators, the state’s request notes, undertook extensive resource-planning efforts to ensure that the unit’s closure would not lead to adequacy or reliability issues.

“There is no evidence of an energy emergency that would require keeping Craig Unit 1 open,” Weiser said in a press release. “This is a federal intrusion into the state’s authority to design and manage energy policy within our borders.”