DOE Emergency Order Let Homestead, Florida, Run Power Plants Past Permit Limits During Winter Storm Fern

The cold settled over Homestead, Florida, on the last weekend of January, the kind of dry chill that bites harder in homes built for tropical heat. As residents cranked up space heaters and heat pumps, their small city-owned utility warned Washington it might soon have to shut off power to some customers to keep the lights on for everyone else.

Late on Jan. 30, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed an emergency order giving Homestead Public Services Energy (HPS Energy), the municipal utility, a drastic alternative. For four days, the order allowed the utility to run certain power plants “notwithstanding air quality or other permit limitations” to keep electricity flowing during a prolonged cold snap following Winter Storm Fern.

The decision, outlined in Department of Energy Order No. 202-26-09, marked a rare—but increasingly used—deployment of a federal emergency power that can temporarily override environmental rules in the name of grid reliability. It also placed a city of fewer than 90,000 people at the center of a national debate over how the government balances keeping the heat on against keeping the air clean.

A narrowly tailored request to avoid outages

In its Jan. 30 request to the Department of Energy, HPS Energy said a second burst of Arctic air was expected to push electricity demand to record levels on Sunday, Feb. 1, and into the following week. The utility said it had already appealed to customers to conserve, canceled recallable sales, committed all available generators and emergency ratings, and attempted to buy additional power.

“Even after HPS Energy has taken these steps,” the city wrote, “there remains a risk that HPS Energy may be unable to serve its firm native load without curtailing service to some customers.” The utility described its request as “narrowly tailored” and said it sought authority to exceed emissions and other permit limits only as “a last resort” before declaring an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) 3 and resorting to rotating outages.

Homestead is about 26 miles southwest of Miami, between Everglades and Biscayne national parks. Its population is majority Hispanic and relatively young, with many low- and moderate-income households. Homes, schools and clinics are designed more for hurricanes and extreme heat than for hard freezes.

What the federal order allowed—and required

In the Jan. 30 order, issued at 11:34 p.m. Eastern time, the Department of Energy formally determined “that a statutory emergency exists within the HPS Energy service territory due to a shortage of electric energy, a shortage of facilities for the generation of electric energy, and other causes” associated with Winter Storm Fern and the extended cold.

The order directed Homestead to operate a list of “Specified Resources”—generating units identified in a confidential exhibit—whenever the utility determined they were necessary to meet demand and maintain grid stability. It authorized those units to run “notwithstanding air quality or other permit limitations” under federal, state or local law, but only for the period from issuance through Feb. 3 at 10 a.m.

The department stressed that the emergency authority was limited in scope and duration and required HPS Energy to:

• Run units only as needed to meet demand and maintain stability.
• Continue monitoring and reporting emissions “to the maximum extent feasible.”
• Inform the department daily if it used the order to operate any unit beyond its normal limits.

The legal tool: Federal Power Act Section 202(c)

The order invoked Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, which allows the energy secretary to require temporary generation, delivery, interchange, or transmission of electricity during war or other emergencies.

Congress amended the law in 2015 to limit orders that conflict with environmental requirements to no more than 90 days at a time and to require that they, “to the maximum extent practicable,” remain consistent with environmental laws and minimize adverse environmental impacts.

A follow-up clarification on environmental liability

A key question—only partly addressed in the Homestead order—was how emergency operations would be treated under longer-term environmental caps.

On Feb. 4, the Department of Energy issued an omnibus “Order Granting Rehearing” covering more than a dozen Section 202(c) orders tied to Winter Storm Fern, including Homestead’s. The rehearing followed a petition from NRG Energy in a separate case seeking clarity on how emergency directives interact with rolling limits in air permits, such as annual caps on emissions or hours of operation.

Citing Section 202(c)(3), the department clarified that actions taken to comply with an emergency order that result in a violation of an environmental requirement:

• “shall not be considered a violation,” and
• cannot give rise to civil or criminal liability or citizen suits.

The department went further, stating that emissions, hours of operation and fuel burned while complying with the orders “shall not be counted” toward rolling permit limits for the affected period.

In practical terms, for Homestead and other utilities covered by Fern-related orders, extra pollution emitted while following federal directives during those days would not only be shielded from enforcement—it also would not push plants closer to their annual caps.

Part of a broader Florida and national response

Homestead’s order was part of a cluster of seven emergency directives issued Jan. 30 and 31 for Florida utilities, including Duke Energy Florida, the Florida Municipal Power Agency, Lakeland Electric and the Orlando Utilities Commission. The department said the moves were intended “to mitigate the risk of blackouts in Florida” as “exceptionally low temperatures” drove demand.

The Florida actions came amid one of the broadest, simultaneous uses of Section 202(c) in recent memory. As Winter Storm Fern swept across the country from roughly Jan. 22 to 31, the department also granted emergency authority to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, PJM Interconnection, ISO New England, the New York Independent System Operator and others. In many regions, the orders allowed grid operators to direct backup generators at large industrial sites and data centers or to operate generating units at maximum output despite air-quality limits.

Legal challenges and the debate over “temporary” emergencies

At the same time, the Trump administration’s use of the same statute in other contexts has drawn legal challenges. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Colorado and Washington, environmental and consumer groups have gone to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to contest a series of 90-day emergency orders that kept aging coal and fossil-fuel plants operating after planned retirement dates.

In those cases, advocates have called the directives “sham emergency orders” and argued the department falsely invoked emergency powers where no true shortage existed, using Section 202(c) to override state decisions and market forces. An independent analysis commissioned by several advocacy groups estimated that widespread use of such extensions could cost consumers between $3 billion and $6 billion a year, a figure critics cite to argue the policy shifts risk becoming more than temporary measures.

Energy officials say Section 202(c) remains a tool of last resort and that the orders issued during Fern, including Homestead’s, were sharply limited in time and scope. The department has emphasized that utilities must still pursue conservation, maximize existing generation and imports, and use emergency authority only to prevent or respond to conditions such as EEA 3, when controlled outages are imminent or underway.

What lingers after the cold snap

For Homestead residents, the emergency passed quickly. The order expired on schedule the morning of Feb. 3. The city has not publicly detailed how often, if at all, it relied on the authority to exceed permit limits, and the daily reports required by the department are not routinely published.

The questions raised by the episode may linger longer than the cold snap that prompted it. As climate change fuels more extreme weather and electricity demand rises with the growth of data centers and electrification, utility planners and federal regulators are leaning more often on laws written for rare crises—each new emergency declaration testing where the line lies between a short-term exception and a new way of running the nation’s power system.