Bill that could keep coal plants running longer passes out of committee, heads to House floor

A bill that would slow Indiana's move away from coal and toward natural gas and renewables is heading to the Indiana House floor after more than two hours of committee testimony.

House Bill 1414 would require Indiana utilities to prove that any plans to shut down a power plant are either required by a federal mandate or otherwise in the public interest.

The bill's author — Rep Ed. Soliday, who also chairs the House Utilities, Energy and Telecommunications Committee that advanced the measure Wednesday on a 9-4 vote — introduced a major amendment that would essentially give it an expiration date.

The Valparaiso Republican acknowledged that much of the original bill was a placeholder "because people were still negotiating." Still, the aspect of the bill that would require approval by the state's regulatory commission remains. 

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And for many of the nearly three dozen people who testified, that is the aspect that they take issue with: They feel it is redundant and burdensome and amounts to government intervention in the free market, which is shifting utilities away from coal. 

In fact, only a handful of individuals spoke in favor of the bill, and four of them were speaking on behalf of the Indiana Coal Council. The other 30 or so who testified spoke in opposition to the bill.

Those interests represented Indiana's five investor-owned utilities, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the Indiana Industrial Energy Consumers, the Indiana Conservative Alliance for Energy, consumer advocates, environmentalists and ratepayers themselves.

Soliday said that the bill is not a coal bailout, as many analysts, advocates and even some conservatives have described it. Rather, he said, this bill is intended as a pause while the state assesses its energy future. 

Indiana studying its energy mix

The 21st Century Energy Policy Task Force, which Soliday co-chairs, is working to determine the direction Indiana should take and what its energy mix should be going forward. Soliday said he doesn't expect to stop the overall transition away from coal, but that this bill lets the task force be "methodical."

"You can write that I want to save coal, but I don’t think I’m that good, I don’t think I can do it," he said in closing comments before voting on the bill. "I just want a measured, responsible approach."

Soliday said one part of his amendment is meant to address that: It would establish a sunset date for the legislation. On July 1, 2021, everything related to the law would go away. 

That timing isn't coincidental, he said. The task force is meant to complete its work and submit a report to the General Assembly and Gov. Eric Holcomb in December of this year. That sunset date would then allow the legislature to take action to implement the law before the "pause" would go away.

But many critics worry the amendment is just a way to get the bill passed, arguing that it is all too easy to remove or extend sunset dates. 

Just last year, for example, Soliday extended the sunset date to some legislation he authored in 2018. That law, passed in 2018, stated that car subscription programs would be prohibited in Indiana until May 1, 2019. Then in a new law authored by Soliday and passed last year, he extended the prohibition another year to May 2, 2020. 

Leading coal bill foe: Why delay its demise? 

Soliday's delay of coal retirements echoes an unsuccessful amendment he introduced late in the 2019 session that would have created a moratorium on large new generation projects — targeting natural gas and renewables such as wind or solar.

The utilities committee's ranking minority member — Rep. Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington — led the bipartisan effort to defeat the moratorium last year. He offered similar resistance in his closing comments Wednesday. 

"The Chairman managed to put all the environmentalists on the same side as utilities and the (Indiana) Energy Association," he said. "The Chairman hinted this is not going to change the overall macro-transition, so I don’t understand why we need this to delay in even the short term."

Rep. Ryan Hatfield, D-Evansville, echoed Pierce's thoughts. He asked Danielle McGrath of the Indiana Energy Association, the voice of the utilities at the statehouse, if they were worried about the speed of the transition and their ability to provide reliable electricity.

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McGrath replied that that was not a worry, adding that the utilities do an extensive modeling process to ensure they are meeting the needs of customers and providing energy for the stability of the grid. 

Hatfield, who has many miners in his district, acknowledged that he is sensitive to the difficulties this transition creates for communities where coal is a resonant topic. Still, he wishes the investment was being made not to delay the transition, but to help those workers transition to new jobs with training and other resources.

Indiana's coal industry is having a bad week

On Monday, Terre Haute-based Sunrise Coal laid off 90 employees after announcing it was temporarily idling production at one of its mines. And Tuesday, the rural electricity cooperative Hoosier Energy announced plans to retire one of its coal-fired power plants, leaving more than 100 without jobs. Hoosier Energy, however, said that it will work to help those employees train and transition to new positions. 

The bill passed on party lines. Several of the Republican representatives who supported the bill said they would not be voting in favor of the bill if the sunset language had not been part of the amendment.

They also said they still have some questions and that there are parts of the legislation they would like to learn more about or "would need to get comfortable with" before voting for it on the House floor. That, however, is why they voted it through, they said, to give them more time.

Call IndyStar reporter Sarah Bowman at 317-444-6129 or email at sarah.bowman@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook: @IndyStarSarah. Connect with IndyStar’s environmental reporters: Join The Scrub on Facebook.

IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.