Multiple public interest organizations have taken their challenge of the U.S. Department of Energy’s emergency orders keeping two Indiana coal plants operating past their planned retirement dates to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Sierra Club, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, and Earthjustice — representing the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, Just Transition Northwest Indiana and Hoosier Environmental Council — petitioned the D.C. Circuit to review DOE’s pair of Dec. 23 orders keeping Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s R.M. Schahfer and CenterPoint Energy’s F.B. Culley coal plants running through March 23. They asked the court to overturn both orders in their pair of March 16 filings (26-1056 and 26-1057).

DOE denied the groups’ rehearing requests on the orders in late February. They argued that forcing the coal plants to remain open is “unnecessary and threatens to increase electricity bills and pollution.”

“The 90-day federal ‘emergency’ orders override the decisions made in the interest of customers by power companies, grid operators and state utility regulators to retire the plants,” Earthjustice said in a press release. The environmental law group cited its prior research showing that the Schahfer and Culley coal units would cost ratepayers more than $20 million to operate for the first 90-day period. That’s notwithstanding any extensive repairs that NIPSCO says are necessary for Schahfer to operate. NIPSCO previously estimated that operating Schahfer beyond 2025 would require more than $1 billion. (See Enviros Warn NIPSCO Against Rebuilding Coal Unit on DOE Emergency Order.)

Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Citizens Action Coalition, said CenterPoint and NIPSCO residential customers already face the highest electric bills in Indiana.

“They simply can’t afford it,” Olson said in a press release.

Even before costs of the plants are allocated to ratepayers, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission initiated an affordability inquiry into the state’s five investor-owned utilities, including NIPSCO and CenterPoint. Rates in Indiana have jumped sharply in recent years. (See Indiana Commission Opens Affordability Inquiry into Utilities.)

Sierra Club Senior Attorney Greg Wannier said the Trump administration’s orders are illegal and another attempt to “bolster the coal industry and shift energy costs onto Hoosiers.”

“Propping up expensive, polluting coal will only exacerbate the affordability crisis families are facing,” Wannier said.

Earthjustice also pointed out that groundwater at Schahfer is “highly contaminated by its leaking coal ash pond.” In late 2025, EPA allowed Schahfer, along with 10 other coal plants, to continue to dump coal ash in unlined ponds until Oct. 17, 2031, delaying closure of the ponds by three years.

“Federal law simply doesn’t permit the federal government to manipulate power sector assets in this way without a true emergency,” Sameer Doshi, Earthjustice senior attorney, said in a statement. “The plant owners and everyone with responsibility for grid stability planned several years ahead for the orderly retirement of these aging units. Now the Trump administration is forcing continued and unnecessary burning of coal, which will mean more air and water pollution as well as higher electricity bills. We’re asking the court to curb this abuse.”

Both units are in MISO territory along with Consumers Energy’s J.H. Campbell Plant, which also was ordered to stay online by DOE. FERC has already cleared Campbell to use a MISO Midwest-wide allocation when proposing costs to be recovered.