This month utilities in Indiana and Ohio announced renewables projects and coal retirements that together mark a watershed moment in the demise of fossil-burning power in the Midwest. Sierra Club and the Environmental Law Program in particular have been instrumental in causing this progress.
In Indiana, Northern Indiana Public Service Company announced the results of its 20-year electric resource plan on September 19, 2018. NIPSCO’s plan calls for the retirement of its last two coal-burning plants, the 1100 megawatt (MW) Schahfer plant, near Wheatfield, by 2023, and the 540 MW Michigan City plant by 2028. The Michigan City community is one-third African American and suffers high rates of poverty, and so the retirement of that plant has long been an environmental justice goal of the Beyond Coal Campaign. In addition, in an unprecedented move for an Indiana utility, NIPSCO announced that its most-viable path for replacing this coal capacity involves no new fossil-burning power: instead, NIPSCO’s plan calls for a stunning 1,500 MW of solar (including solar plus storage), 150 MW of wind, and 125 MW energy efficiency programs. This is the first time an Indiana utility has announced the retirement of an entire coal fleet without also building new natural gas capacity.
Sierra Club’s litigation helped push NIPSCO to retire these coal-burning plants and to improve its resource planning process. In 2017, NIPSCO sought several hundred million dollars in customer money for capital projects at the Schahfer and Michigan City plants. In litigation before the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission, Sierra Club was the only party to oppose NIPSCO’s request, represented by ELP Staff Attorney Tony Mendoza, along with testifying expert Dr. Jeremy Fisher, now ELP’s in-house electric markets expert. Sierra Club demonstrated—using NIPSCO’s own numbers—that in every risk and forecast scenario, retiring both plants rather than spending customer money to continue to operate them would save customers at least $400 million. In the litigation, Sierra Club also heavily criticized NIPSCO’s non-transparent, vague, and arbitrary means for reaching the decision to seek customer money for those plants. While the Indiana Commission ultimately approved NIPSCO’s cost recovery request over our objection, this litigation starkly demonstrated that these plants had no economic future.
In the wake of the cost recovery litigation, NIPSCO began its 2018 resource planning process, and reached out to Sierra Club for input on improving its resource planning decision process. Tony Mendoza, Dr. Jeremy Fisher, and Hoosier Chapter Energy chair Steve Francis and Beyond Coal Campaign leaders Wendy Bredhold and Ashley Williams pushed NIPSCO to retire all of its coal capacity while fairly and adequately considering clean energy as a replacement. NIPSCO’s 2018 process was greatly improved compared to its previous plan primarily through reliance on an “All-Source” request for proposals which allowed clean energy developers to demonstrate the potential of renewable sources of energy. Having received record low bids for solar and wind, NIPSCO was able to announce a clean energy plan for Indiana, completely reversing its position from just a year ago on the need to operate its coal plants for the long term.
Sierra Club’s official press release for the NIPSCO resource plan is here.
In Ohio, also on September 19, 2018, AEP Ohio, the electric utility that serves Columbus and central Ohio, filed a cost recovery proceeding asking to construct 900 MW of wind and solar projects. If built, these projects would be the largest expansion of clean energy ever in Ohio, and would push Ohio’s remaining merchant coal-burning plants even further out of the PJM energy market assuring their ultimate retirement, while also helping to put the brakes on any new merchant gas-burning plants. All of Sierra Club’s capacities have been mobilizing to support AEP Ohio’s proposal, including ELP, the Beyond Coal Campaign, and the Ohio Chapter staff and volunteers.
This AEP Ohio clean energy proposal is a direct result of Sierra Club litigation. In 2015, Sierra Club, represented by ELP Attorneys Kristin Henry and Tony Mendoza, as well as private attorney Chris Bzdok, opposed AEP Ohio’s request for a coal bailout at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio that would have guaranteed complete cost recovery of AEP’s Ohio coal fleet through 2051. Sierra Club’s attorneys took the lead in opposing this request, deposing all of AEP’s witnesses, and battering their credibility at the evidentiary hearing. Of particular note, Sierra Club’s attorneys unearthed the fact that AEP relied on its second most-recent power prices forecast, even though a more-recent company-wide forecast had been created before it filed its case, and the more-recent forecast dramatically undermined the economic outlook of its coal plants. In addition to ELP, the Beyond Coal Campaign, led by Nachy Kanfer and Neil Waggoner, did outstanding work mobilizing public opposition to the AEP’s coal bailout. Thousands of Sierra Club members and others sent comments to the Ohio Commission asking for it to reject the bailout. Our volunteers and members dominated the public hearings on the bailout proposals. With all Sierra Club capacities working together, we created a significant litigation risk for AEP Ohio.
Soon after the evidentiary hearing in the litigation, Sierra Club and AEP Ohio reached a settlement. As a part of this settlement, AEP Ohio reduced the term of its coal bailout request to just eight years, agreed to shutdown three coal-burning units, and also agreed to build 900 MW of clean energy in Ohio. AEP Ohio has now come forward with its plan to build all of that clean energy, and Sierra Club looks forward to working to assure that these projects are built.
Sierra Club’s official press release for the AEP Ohio clean energy plan is here.