The 2025 session of the Indiana General Assembly is officially underway. This year is a "long" session when the biennial budget is crafted. The session must adjourn no later than April 29th. A complete list of the 2025 legislative deadlines can be found here.  

2025 Highlighted Bills CAC Opposes

House Bill 1007, as well as Senate Bills 423 and 424, are primarily being driven by the recent data center boom and Big Tech’s voracious appetite for energy.

With these bills, state legislators are using captive Indiana utility customers as economic development tools, forcing us to fund the costs of design, engineering, planning, and permitting for the small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) they have chosen to satisfy Big Tech’s energy guzzling desires.

HB1007, SB423, and SB424 all:

• Force Indiana electric utility customers to foot the bill for the SMR design, engineering, planning, and permitting costs before the utility seeks approval to build the SMR, and even if they never seek approval and cancel the project.

HB1007 goes even further to:

• Give hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue for the State of Indiana in the form of tax credits to the manufacturers of SMRs in Indiana

• Reduce regulatory oversight of the monopoly utilities by fast tracking approval of new generation resources to serve Big Tech and their data centers, plus a tracker to charge customers for these resources before they are generating any electricity.

• Make it more difficult for Indiana utilities to retire coal-fired power plants.

It should be noted that there are a total of ZERO small modular reactors operating in the entire United States. 

The one SMR that has gotten the furthest along in the U.S. was the NuScale SMR in Utah, which was proposed in 2015 and cancelled in late 2023 without ever beginning any construction.

• The cost for this project was estimated at $2.7 billion in 2015 when the project was proposed, and it was projected to be online by 2026.

• By 2023, the cost estimate had more than tripled to $9.3 billion and the projected operational date was pushed back to 2030.

• Power from these SMRs was projected to cost $58 per megawatt hour in 2021, and had ballooned by over 53% to a projected $89/MWh in 2023.

• In November 2023, the project was cancelled after the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) backed out, stating that not enough of the municipal electric utilities would agree to purchase electricity from the project because the cost had escalated well beyond what they were willing to pay for electricity.

2025 Highlighted Bills CAC Supports

Pro-Consumer Bills

Senate Bills 97, 226, and 434 are broad and strong consumer protection bills that, taken together, will help keep more Hoosiers connected to utility service and strengthen utility transparency. With three out of Indiana’s five large utilities filing for unprecedented $40+/month rate hikes in 2024, these bills create much-needed protections for Hoosiers struggling to keep up with rising energy costs and unparalleled monopoly greed. 

• Senate Bill 97 will prohibit electric and gas utilities from disconnecting Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) qualified households in the heat of summer, and eliminate disconnections for all residential customers on Fridays, weekends, and legal holidays. Additionally, SB97 will prevent utilities from charging outrageous fees for customers struggling to make ends meet. It also requires utilities to report critical data detailing the affordability crisis, like the number of households they disconnect and aggregated customer arrearage data.

   

• Senate Bill 226 will make utility service more affordable for vulnerable Hoosiers by allowing the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to approve low-income assistance programs proposed by electric and gas utilities. Right now, utility regulators are only authorized to approve assistance programs for water and wastewater utilities.

   

• Senate Bill 434 will prevent utilities from charging customers for lobbyists, political activities, and other activities that enable utilities to rig the system in their favor. In addition, this bill increases transparency for Hoosier consumers by requiring utilities to provide a breakdown of the charges and fees that make up the total amount owed and describe the service or cost associated with each charge or fee, information that should already be readily available to Hoosiers. 

Community Solar Bills 

Senate Bill 541 and House Bill 1581 authorize independent community solar in Indiana. Right now, community solar is virtually nonexistent for a majority of Hoosiers because current laws only allow electric utilities to own and operate community solar facilities. Large investor-owned utilities are failing to deploy community solar, which helps Hoosiers save money on their bills and become more energy independent. SB541 and HB1581 allow Hoosiers to subscribe to independent-owned and operated community solar facilities to receive credits on their monthly bills.