Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul are launching new legal fights against Department of Energy emergency orders keeping two Indiana coal plants operating past their planned retirement dates.
The nearly identical lawsuits filed Thursday in federal court in Washington come after environmental groups first challenged the DOE orders for the R.M. Schahfer power plant and the F.B. Culley generating station last month.
The new challenges from the Democratic attorneys general claim that keeping the Indiana plants open will increase energy costs for Minnesota and Illinois ratepayers who are part of the same regional grid, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. The plants’ continued operation will also increase pollution, they said.
“It makes no sense for the federal government to force old, out-of-date, expensive, and polluting coal plants to continue operating far past when they were supposed to shut down,” said Ellison in a statement.
