In advance of its October 31st public meeting, AES Indiana published a lengthy slideshow on its website on Monday which outlines its plan to convert the two remaining coal-fired units at Petersburg, Indiana to natural gas by 2025, and add up to 1,300 megawatts of wind, solar, and storage by 2027.
Reliable Energy Inc.’s CEO Matt Bell made the following comments regarding AES’s costly and unreliable plan:
“In 2021, Indiana was the nation’s eighth largest coal production state, producing 19.4 million short tons of coal and generating an economic impact of $1.5 billion annually. In addition to the approximately 1,800 men and women who go to work every day in coal mines and production facilities in Indiana, the industry supports an additional 3,400 indirect jobsin the Hoosier state.
“We are disappointed in AES Indiana’s decision to convert its Petersburg power plants to natural gas and abandon their coal assets. We have heard warning after warning throughout 2022 from MISO (our Regional Transmission Operator), FERC, and NERC that reliable capacity is approaching a crisis state. By choosing to abandon coal-fired generators that are fed by coal that is mined in Indiana, AES will have to rely on natural gas imported from an out of state source. Rather than assuring the reliability of Indiana’s energy grid by leaning into Indiana’s coal industry, AES is choosing to depend on buying natural gas capacity on the open market, even while that capacity grows scarcer and scarcer by the day.
“Hoosier rate payers should also be disappointed. They will be forced to pay all of the costs of AES Indiana’s transition to natural gas. Those costs will layer on top of some of the highest energy rates our state has ever seen. Rather than maintaining the coal plants they have until the end of their useful life, and feeding those plants with Indiana-generated resources, AES is sticking its customers with another expensive and unnecessary cost.
“The bottom line is that this decision threatens the reliability of Indiana’s electrical grid and makes energy more expensive for Hoosiers who are already reeling from record inflation and the disastrous federal energy policies that have been enacted over the past two years.”
