Law That Could Slow The Closing Of Coal Plants Sends Wrong Message, Critics Say

Haley Carney 
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS—Legislation that has the potential to extend the life of Indiana’s coal-fired power plants has been signed into law over objections of environmentalists who say it sends the wrong message about the state.

House Enrolled Act 1414, signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb Wednesday, requires the state’s utilities to notify the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission if they plan to close an energy-producing plant.

What opponents fear is the new law could pause the closure of coal plants beyond May 1, 2021 after the 21st Century Energy Task Force finishes its work. The law took effect when it was signed.

“We worry about what signal HEA 1414 sends to talent and businesses,” said Jesse Kharbanda, executive director of the Hoosier Environmental Council. “As we wrote in our letter to the Governor, ‘Talent – at whatever age – increasingly make decisions on where to locate based on a community’s sustainable amenities.”

Kharbanda and others who opposed the bill questioned the kind of signal lawmakers are sending by favoring a technology that generates millions of tons of toxic waste like arsenic, chromium and mercury. Furthermore, he said, Indiana’s companies are adopting aggressive sustainability plans and HEA 1414 runs counter to those trends.

The author of the controversial bill, Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, maintains that the legislation is not a coal bill and has little to do with the environment.

“We’re in a period of extremely rapid change,” he said. “We have coal basically not competitive anymore in price because they cannot compete with the cheaper prices from other industries.”

Soliday argues that coal is a necessary component of the state’s energy supply until a stable replacement is found.

“This bill got far more media play mainly because people went out and said it was something that it wasn’t,” Soliday said. “Nobody was trying to save the coal industry because it cant be done. We’re agnostic. What we would like to do is soften the blow to the workers and that’s the second part of the bill.”

Section Soliday referred to provides assistance to coal industry workers who are displaced when plants switch from coal to other forms of energy, like wind or solar.

But Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said he is concerned about the impact of the legislation as the state is in a transition as utilities move away from coal.

“It’s less expensive to phase out coal and go with these newer forms of energy,” he said. “This bill slows this down.”

Pierce and Kharbanda said they are concerned the May 1, 2021 date, when the legislation is supposed to be phased out, will be extended in the 2021 session of the General Assembly.

Kharbanda said HEC worries about the impact of coal pollution on the neighborhood’s near coal-fired plants and the coal ash generated, like the Clifty Creek plant in Madison, Indiana. HEA 1414 provides an incentive to extend the life of that plant, he said, exposing people in the area to the pollution.

FOOTNOTE: Haley Carney is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.