Indiana Office of Energy Development Pitches Nuclear and SMRs Amid Data Center Moratoriums

Daniel BurkePublished every day

At an Oct. 30 economic outlook event in Valparaiso, Luke Wilson, chief policy officer at the Indiana Office of Energy Development, told attendees the state needs to replace 500 megawatts of generation by 2035 as 6.8 gigawatts of coal plants retire by 2036, and pitched converting retiring coal sites to small modular reactors at a 15 to 35 percent capital cost savings over new construction. NIPSCO is separately investing $7 billion in gas and battery capacity, including a 500 megawatt storage project tied partly to Amazon's Hobart data center campus, as it plans for 8.6 gigawatts of data center demand by 2035, nearly four times its non-data-center load. What didn't get as much airtime is that 25 of Indiana's 92 counties have already enacted data center moratoriums, two of them outright bans, and Citizens Action Coalition along with 27 other groups have flagged that system-wide grid upgrades could still land on NIPSCO's 500,000 existing ratepayers even after hyperscalers cover their own dedicated generation costs.

Impact

The nuclear pitch glosses over Indiana's real near-term fight: 25 of the state's 92 counties have now enacted data-center moratoriums (two outright bans), shrinking the addressable site pool even as NIPSCO plans for 8.6 GW of data-center demand by 2035, nearly four times its non-data-center load. Citizens Action Coalition and 27 other groups have flagged that while Amazon, Microsoft and Google cover dedicated generation costs, system-wide grid upgrades could still land on NIPSCO's 500,000 existing ratepayers, a cost-shift question regulators haven't resolved.

Watch

Whether the Indianapolis City-County Council's data-center moratorium (advanced through 2027) and similar county-level bans spread further, and any NRC pre-application filing tied to Purdue's eight coal-to-nuclear study sites.

For the huddle

Are any of our facilities located in one of the 25 counties that have already enacted a data-center moratorium, and could that same local political resistance eventually slow permitting for our own industrial expansions?

Check your county against that list directly, since local resistance to data center permitting in those counties could carry over to industrial expansion permitting for unrelated projects.

Sources

Data center growth spurs call for nuclear power plants in Indiana · chicagotribune.com

Earlier coverage

From the brief, November 4, 2026

Samsung SDI Begins Kokomo LFP Battery Shipments on 60 GWh Order Book
Indiana Office of Energy Development Pitches Nuclear and SMRs Amid Data Center Moratoriums
AEP Creates AEP Infrastructure Unit as Indiana Michigan Power Races to Serve 3.1 GW of Data Center Load
$8.5 Billion Auto Component Wave Includes Stellantis Kokomo Engine Line Expansion
September Factory Orders Beat Expectations as Tariff-Driven Margin Squeeze Builds

The whole day’s brief →

This story

From the Energy Answers library · most read

Field guide

Demand Ratchets: One Peak, A Year of Cost

A ratchet turns one bad interval into twelve months of minimum billing. This guide shows you how it works, why metered and billed demand differ, and what to track so you can stop treating it like black magic.

Decision 3· Demand Charges

Read the guide

Work email

Operator Field Guide

Energy Decision 3

Decoding

Demand Ratchets: One Peak, A Year of Cost

Hosted by

Daniel Burke

A companion to

Episode 3 · Demand Ratchets Explained: Why One Peak Can Cost You All Year

Manufacturers Energy Grant Program

Free for Porter County manufacturers

Porter County manufacturers receive free, ongoing energy auditing and cost control that reduces their energy bills and keeps them low, month after month. Every line item checked and validated, every opportunity found comes with a step-by-step guide to capture it.

Claim your Grant Check out the program

EDCs: sponsor this program and it carries your organization's name For economic developers →