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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe planned retirement of numerous, large coal-fired generating units around Indiana could be slowed under a bill that would require electric utilities to ask state regulators for permission before they shut them down.
State Rep. Cindy Ledbetter, R-Evansville, introduced the bill this month, saying utilities are moving too fast to retire and replace generating capacity.
“Indiana has been warned that our electrical grid is stressed,” she told IBJ. “Currently our state requires not only existing generation, but we’re going to need to add more generating capacity to support the significant economic development opportunities in Indiana.”
The Indiana coal lobby is hailing the bill as a good step to keep the grid from potentially failing. But environmental and consumer groups say it would favor fossil fuels and slow Indiana’s transition to clean renewable energy.
House Bill 1382 would give the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission the authority to approve or deny the retirement of an electric generating unit and would require electric utilities to demonstrate the retirement would result in cost savings to customers.
Ledbetter denied the bill is meant to prop up Indiana’s coal industry, which once counted on electric utilities for a huge part of their business, only to see it dwindle over the past decade as the utilities have converted their plants to natural gas or renewable energy, such as solar and wind power.
“This isn’t a bill to save the coal industry,” Ledbetter said. “… I’m not a very big proponent of coal and never have been. But I also see the common sense of how we cannot move forward in our state, keep adding all this green energy, then try to electrify our vehicles. We’re going to have to realize that we have to stop and ensure we have reliability and resiliency in our grid.”
Regional grid operators have warned that growing consumer demand for electricity, a large number of severe storms and aging transmission equipment could pose risks to the grid.
But some consumer groups point out that Indiana utilities are already required to update long-term generating plans every three years with state regulators to indicate retirement of units and construction of new units. As part of the process, utilities meet with customer groups, regional grid operators and state regulators.
“There’s a long process that utilities must undertake before they retire a coal plant, because the retirement is contingent upon approval of new resources,” said Kerwin Olson, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana. “This bill sort of ignores the fact that there is already a process in place.”
The Hoosier Environmental Council said the bill would slow Indiana’s transition away from coal, a dirty fossil fuel, to greener energy sources. It placed HB 1382 on its “bill watch.”
“Besides adding an unnecessary burden to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, this bill encourages our public utilities to keep their current energy generation sources running as long as possible, which are majority fossil fuels,” the council said on its website.
But the group representing Indiana’s coal industry, Reliable Energy Inc., said the bill is a “commonsense approach” to ensuring that energy is readily and consistently available.
“The electric grid that Hoosiers depend on to heat and power their homes and businesses is under unprecedented strain,” Matt Bell, CEO of Reliable Energy, said in an email to IBJ. “… Today, as we endure the arctic blast that has enveloped the nation, Americans are being instructed to conserve energy so that the grid does not fail.”
The bill was assigned to the House Utilities, Energy and Telecommunications Committee but has not been scheduled for a hearing, raising questions about its future in this year’s short legislative session. The deadline for bills to get passed out of the full House is Feb. 5.
Neither Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, the committee chair, nor House Speaker Todd Huston, returned calls to IBJ to comment on the bill.
Ledbetter said she hopes the bill will get a hearing, but she has not spoken to Soliday. She is not a member of the utilities committee.
The legislation appears similar to a law that went into last year in Kentucky that prevents the retirement of coal-fired power plants unless a utility convinces state regulators that retiring a unit will result in higher costs for customers and will maintain or improve the reliability and resilience of the grid.
Ledbetter said Indiana state regulators currently don’t have authority to prevent the closure of a power plant, although they conduct hearings and hand down orders on new power plants.
“There’s not the same formal process in place to determine if the closing or retiring of a generating unit or a power plant is in the best interest of Indiana or the ratepayer,” she said.
Several Indiana utilities have announced in recent years they plan to retire coal-fired units. Indianapolis-based AES Indiana said in 2022 it wants to convert two remaining coal-fired units at its huge Petersburg power plant to natural gas by 2025 and add up to 1,300 megawatts of wind, solar and storage by 2027.
Major corporations, including Indiana’s Eli Lilly and Co. and Cummins Inc., have said they want to sharply cut their carbon footprint and are putting pressure on energy providers to ramp up capacity.
The Indiana Energy Association, the lobbying group for the state’s large electric utilities, did not return a call and an email to IBJ.
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This bill seems to make sense in light of what is happening with the rapid integration of “green energy”. We need to look hard at the coming changes that “possibly” could hold promise, yet there is not enough information available apparently to see how and if the implementation of these energy sources will truly work as desired. Is this a pipe dream? Nobody wants to admit that but the current failure of electric-cars in the cold winter temps is but one example of one failure to meet expectations. I shudder to think that some might perish in the cold due to a lack of foresight and honesty in what these changes are bringing. Lastly, I had to laugh when reading about Cummins wanting to put pressure on energy providers to “ramp up capacity so they can reduce their carbon footprint.” These are the same people who were fined $2 billion recently for cheating on emission standards for Ram trucks. Yup, they really care about the environment.
Indiana should be striving towards more reliable energy, not more unreliable energy. Kudos to Ledbetter for seeing the light.
I believe going green quickly harms low income citizens keeping cost high replacing assets. These energy companies also make money building these new plants. I have my doubts about climate change given the way these studies are conducted. Have you ever noticed they conclude with more study is needed? “Please send me grants.” I like this bill.
When I read the headline, I thought the only way to slow the move away from coal is to force people to use it. After I read the article, that’s exactly what lawmakers want utilities to do!
Coal is dead in the industrialized world. No multinational bank will loan money for a coal project. The only reason it’s expanding in India and China is from government intervention.
Most utilities, (including AES Indiana) have sensible plans for going green that don’t seem to endanger the stability of the grid.
As for going green hurting poor people, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a house with a coal furnace. Additionally, in a free market, as the demand drops for fossil fuels, the price drops.
You can’t deny $/kw is way higher than a few years back. Why?
You say China and India are using more coal because of government intervention, but the US is using less coal because of market forces? That’s unbelievable it’s proven that through the EPA and other federal mechanisms, that coal is intentionally being priced upwards to minimize its use.
A totally bourgeois take. Sure, almost nobody uses coal furnaces, but most homes are powered by coal-fueled electricity., even if they’re heated by natural gas. Fundamentally, Teslas are coal-fueled cars–more of a status symbol than a genuine effort to lower carbon footprints.
Every attempt to replace coal with boutique green energy sources ends up costing more, especially for the lower-income people who can least afford these idealistic forays into alternative energy. Meanwhile, the cleanest, most reliable clean energy source–nuclear–is plunging in popularity due to scares that evoke the Cold War (particularly in Europe but also here), leaving a number of wealthy Western countries more dependent on fossil fuels (oil and natural gas mostly) than ever before. And it sure didn’t help the Germans last winter, when the US bombed the Nord Stream 1 & 2 pipelines to Russia.
At the very least Pepperidge Farm remembers the good old days, way back in 2019 when the United States was energy independent. Now, rather than using domestic sources (natural gas, coal, and oil are all abundant here), we’re simply purchasing high-polluting fossil fuels from friendly nations like Venezuela, a failed state that is just waiting to invade Guyana for no other reason to expand its own already vast oil reserves.
Most utilities do not have sensible plans for retiring coal and gas fired plants.
The push to green up our electric production has led to some terrible decisions.
MISO is sitting on 6 gigawatts of solar fields and there is no timeline for their approval.
We are consuming more electricity than we have in history and we are in danger of having rolling brownouts and blackouts in Indiana because on top of horrible production planning, the grid is not being managed well.
Should be an interesting next few years.