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The Trump administration’s determination to keep fossil-fueled power plants running beyond their scheduled closure dates is creating uncertainty about the fate of two Indiana coal facilities set to retire by the end of this year.
Northern Indiana Public Service Company’s 722-megawatt R.M. Schahfer plant, in the small town of Wheatfield, is supposed to close this month. So is CenterPoint Energy’s 90-megawatt F.B. Culley 2, along the Ohio River in southern Indiana.
But the utilities explained to state regulators during a December 2 biannual hearing on reliability that they are preparing for potential Trump administration orders to keep the units operating, and some fear such mandates could come any day.
Already this year, the Department of Energy has forced a coal plant in Michigan and an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania to operate past scheduled retirement dates.
The Trump administration has said coal plants need to stay open to address energy shortages. The Federal Power Act allows the government to temporarily order power plants to operate in case of such an emergency. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun (R) issued an executive order in April echoing the president’s concerns and promising to evaluate and “consider extending the life” of every coal plant in the state.
Community leaders say keeping Schahfer or Culley online will mean unacceptable and unnecessary health risks and costs.
Braun’s executive order notes that 9 gigawatts of coal-fired power are scheduled to retire between 2025 and 2038 in Indiana.
“Now we’re concerned about every single coal plant in the state [scheduled for] retiring,” said Ben Inskeep, program director of the Citizens Action Coalition, which represents consumers statewide. “Utilities are facing extreme pressure to keep coal plants open from the political powers that be.”
At the recent reliability hearing, NIPSCO CEO and chief operating officer Vince Parisi told regulators that he was taking steps to be ready for an emergency order to keep running Schahfer, including checking on coal supply and equipment needed to make major repairs to one of the plant’s units, which has been offline since July.
In June, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission approved a settlement agreement stating the Schahfer plant will close this year. Utility spokesperson Jessica Cantarelli affirmed to Canary Media that “absent a directive to stay open, NIPSCO is on track to retire R.M. Schahfer’s remaining two coal units by the end of 2025.”
But documents show that NIPSCO has not only prepared to run the plant longer but also sought a means to do so.
Fred Gomos, senior director of environmental policy and sustainability at NIPSCO’s parent company, NiSource, emailed the Environmental Protection Agency in early August asking for an extension on a deadline to stop dumping toxic coal ash in an unlined waste pond. Later that month, Gomos followed up with the EPA and mentioned that the company had met with Department of Energy officials about the issue.
Gomos said the coal ash extension was necessary for the company to “justify” capital investments to keep the plant operating. On November 25, the EPA proposed granting the extension to Schahfer and 10 other plants nationwide. Twelve plants had previously requested exceptions to a 2021 deadline to stop putting waste in unlined repositories, which often leak contaminants into groundwater; one was denied. The other requests were never granted, but their filings allowed the plants to put ash in unlined ponds through October 2028. The EPA’s recent proposal, which is open for public comment through January 7, 2026, would allow the 11 plants to dump coal ash in unlined ponds through October 2031.
Cantarelli said Schahfer’s “retirement has not been impacted by EPA’s proposal to extend coal ash–related compliance deadlines,” and did not respond to a question about Gomos’ email seeking the extension.
The EPA proposal noted, “NIPSCO has stated that RM Schahfer would operate its coal-fired boilers until 2028 if the proposed rule change was finalized.” A correction issued December 1 clarified that NIPSCO said it “could potentially operate coal-fired boilers until 2028.”
Three coal plants in Illinois, two in Louisiana, two in Texas, and one each in Ohio, Utah, and Wyoming would also be covered by the coal ash extension.
Earthjustice senior attorney Lisa Evans explained that while a rule under the first Trump administration created the extension through 2028, the EPA never ruled on the plants’ requests. In her view, that makes the proposed extension to 2031 an illegal way that the Trump administration is trying to prolong the life of coal plants.
“The rule did not just give extensions to coal plants to operate unlined surface impoundments with no strings attached,” Evans said. “The plants had to meet specific criteria to be able to continue to operate those unlined impoundments. The Trump administration has not evaluated their compliance and whether they have adequately remediated groundwater contamination.”
Monitoring data reported by NIPSCO shows molybdenum, arsenic, and other contaminants at high levels in groundwater near the Schahfer plant’s unlined pond.
“EPA has to make sure these utilities are operating in a way that’s protective of health and the environment,” Evans said. “They’ve thrown that out the window for the purported reason of throwing more energy into the grid.”
Three times this year, the Trump administration has ordered the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan to keep running for stretches of 90 days past its planned retirement, most recently on November 18. The extension has cost ratepayers $615,000 per day, even as studies show that no energy-shortage emergency exists.
The federal National Energy Regulatory Commission has found that there is an adequate supply of electricity this winter to power the grid that covers Michigan and Indiana.
NERC’s recent reliability report found “limited risk” in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s grid, adding that the grid operator has procured more energy than required.
Data centers for AI are expected to steeply increase electricity demand in coming years, but experts say aging coal plants are not the way to meet that demand. The Schahfer and Culley plants, for example, are hardly well suited to provide significant reliable power.
The Culley plant is CenterPoint’s “smallest and most inefficient coal unit,” the company noted in a 2025 planning summary. Shane Bradford, vice president of CenterPoint’s Indiana Electric, told regulators in the December 2 hearing that the company had enough coal to continue running the plant if forced to.
“We are very concerned this unit could be the target of a [Federal Power Act] 202(c) order this month, given the very assertive stance the Trump and Braun administrations are taking on preventing any coal plant from retiring,” Inskeep said about Culley.
The Schahfer unit that has been offline since July 9 because of turbine problems will need to be “rebuilt” over about six months in order to keep operating, Parisi told regulators. Schahfer’s other coal unit also had outages for hundreds of hours over the summer, caused by leaks in boiler equipment, said David Saffran, NIPSCO generation business systems administrator in the operations management reporting.
“This is the coal plant DOE says must stay on even though it’s not been very reliable and will cost ratepayers to go back online?” said Inskeep. “Shouldn’t this be a natural one to retire?”
A correction was made on Dec. 15, 2025: The 2020 EPA rule extension was created under the first Trump administration, not the Biden administration.
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