Sierra Club Responds to Attorney General Rokita’s Lawsuit to Block the Rockport Coal Plant Retirement

Indiana's attorney general, Todd Rokita, has moved to intervene in a decades-old court case in an attempt to block the planned retirement of the Rockport coal plant in Spencer County. The plant's owner, AEP Indiana Michigan Power, had agreed to close Rockport by the end of 2028 and is already building replacement power sources. The case Rokita is using dates back to the 1990s and was resolved years ago, according to the Sierra Club, which called the intervention too late and said it plans to fight to keep the retirement on schedule.

This follows other recent state and federal moves to keep Indiana coal plants running longer than planned. Governor Braun issued an executive order looking at extending coal plants to supply power for AI data centers, and the Trump administration renewed orders to keep the Culley and Schahfer coal plants operating, even though two Schahfer units are broken and Culley's owner, CenterPoint, had asked federal regulators not to reissue that order, citing the cost of propping up an aging, unreliable plant.

None of this changes anything for homeowners right now, but it points to a broader fight in Indiana over whether aging coal plants stay open longer, largely to meet demand from data centers, rather than retiring on schedule as planned. That fight can affect electricity rates and reliability in the state over time, so it's worth watching if you live in Indiana or another state facing similar pressure to keep coal plants running.