The Trump administration’s order last month to keep one unit of an Indiana coal plant running came over objections from its owner, which called the plant unreliable and unnecessary for grid reliability.
CenterPoint Energy Indiana, the owner of the F.B. Culley coal plant at the state’s southern tip, urged the Department of Energy in a Feb. 17 letter obtained by an Indiana environmental and consumer group not to renew an earlier order requiring Unit 2 at the plant to remain operational for grid reliability.
The utility’s president, Michael Roeder, told Energy Secretary Chris Wright in the letter that maintaining the 60-year-old coal unit “will require substantial investment to support an inefficient and increasingly unreliable asset.” He also said the region’s power grid has ample electrical capacity to meet demand in the months ahead.
Weeks later, on March 23, Wright renewed the order over CenterPoint’s objection, stating, contrary to the utility’s assertion, that “the continued operation of Culley Unit 2 was necessary to alleviate immediate and anticipated threats to reliability.”
