I'm not sure if this behaviour is intended or not, but when the game is paused (Using the pause key, default shift+space; not escape), pressing T, P or clicking on a power pole will not bring up the relevant menus. Furthermore, when one of the screens are brought up and the game is then paused, you can not exit them nor can you change the timeframe (5s, 1min, etc) from the current one. Interestingly enough, you can change what technology you are researching, which is an exception to this. However, when you click on 'research' to change what you are researching, the menu does not close, when it closes if the game is unpaused. Another exception is if there is a message such as in the Campaign or at the beginning of freeplay, you can still tab through the message while the game is paused, which makes me think this behaviour is indeed not intended.
I personally like to pause fairly frequently to take stock of the situation without running the risk of my entire factory collapsing or taking a long detailed look at the production screes to search for anything out of order, so I find this fairly annoying.
i.e. functioning as intended, not a bug, won't fix, etc.
Colonel Failure wrote:You can lose your Ecologist Badge quite quickly once you get to the point of just being able to murder them willy-nilly without a second care in the world.