Gov. Tony Evers sent a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright during Earth Week asking him to reverse his decisions to keep aging and expensive coal-fired power plants in the Midwest open past retirement dates.
This includes the J.H. Campbell Power Plant in Michigan and the R.M. Schahfer and F.B. Culley generating stations in Indiana. According to Evers, keeping these coal power plants open is raising utility costs in Wisconsin.
According to analysis, the plants were no longer economically viable and their closures would have no effect on the electricity supply and grid.
All three coal power plants were scheduled to retire due to the plants reaching the end of their useful lives. But the DOE issued orders to keep them open.
The owner of the F.B. Culley generating station recently described this power plant to the U.S. DOE as “an inefficient and increasingly unreliable asset.”
The three coal power plants run on the same regional electric grid that Wisconsin is part of.
