NIPSCO Schahfer and CenterPoint Culley, What the December 18 Coal Plant Deadline Means for Your Bill

The D.C. Circuit ruled on September 11. Here is what that ruling means for Indiana operators specifically.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers sent a second letter to DOE Secretary Chris Wright warning that the Trump administration's 90-day emergency orders keeping NIPSCO's Schahfer plant in Wheatfield and CenterPoint's Culley plant in Newburgh online could cost Wisconsin ratepayers an estimated $117 million. That number matters to you because a 2025 FERC order requires those operating costs to be spread across all MISO-member state consumers, and that includes Indiana manufacturers.

Here is the detail almost nobody is reporting: NIPSCO's Schahfer Unit 14, one of the units under DOE order, has been offline for maintenance since February 2026. Indiana ratepayers have been absorbing must-run cost allocations for a plant that was not generating electricity for most of the order period. NIPSCO's own 2024 Integrated Resource Plan, filed with the IURC, identified Schahfer for retirement, meaning the utility itself judged its resource stack adequate without it.

The D.C. Circuit's September 11 Campbell ruling, which unanimously vacated the equivalent Michigan order, is now the direct legal template for Earthjustice's parallel challenge to the Indiana orders. The current orders run through December 18. Plausible outcomes range from letting the orders lapse, to a narrower renewal covering specific units only, to a Supreme Court appeal. Your procurement team should be modeling cost exposure across all of those outcomes, not betting on one.