NWI Manufacturers Absorbing $174,000 Per Day for a Coal Plant NIPSCO Says It Doesn't Need

This story has been developing since August, when Governor Braun directed the OUCC to investigate NIPSCO. Here is what is new: on September 11, the D.C. Circuit unanimously vacated a DOE Section 202(c) order for Michigan's J.H. Campbell plant. Legal analysts have argued that order rests on the same statutory theory DOE used for Indiana's R.M. Schahfer Generating Station. The Indiana Schahfer order now faces a December 18 renewal deadline.

The number you need to know: $174,000 per day. That is the daily cost to ratepayers for Schahfer alone, according to Sierra Club's analysis of FERC's cost recovery filing. Nick Wallace at the Environmental Law and Policy Center told the Post-Tribune the combined tab for both the Michigan and Indiana plants was running above half a billion dollars, with FERC having approved that cost passthrough to Midwest industrial customers, including Lake County manufacturers.

The structural problem is this: NIPSCO itself stated it had adequate resources without Schahfer. The reliability rationale is coming from DOE, not from NIPSCO's own integrated resource plan. Whatever you think of that policy call, industrial ratepayers in Lake County are absorbing it. If Earthjustice applies the D.C. Circuit's Michigan reasoning to the Indiana orders before December 18 and there is no replacement capacity in place, you have a winter reliability gap and a rate structure in flux at the same time. Pull your NIPSCO bills now. Find out whether you are currently exposed to FERC-approved rate riders tied to this order, and model your electricity cost baseline against a scenario where it is vacated before year-end.