2025 Indiana General Assembly 

After hours of testimony last week on Senate Bill 424, which creates a new tracker for investor-owned utilities, the bill passed out of the House with bipartisan opposition by a vote of 59-30. (click on the vote link to see how your representative voted). The new tracker in SB424 creates a subsidy for financially healthy utilities to “consider” small modular nuclear reactors (SMR). That means they don’t even have to build anything to get approval to force ratepayers to pay for “project development costs” or pre-construction costs like permitting, procurement, and licensing. 

Incredibly, ratepayers would be forced to pay these costs before the utility has even applied for approval to construct an SMR, and even if the utility never files for approval and cancels the project. You may have seen our posts on social media asking you to contact legislators to oppose SB424 and the other bills (HB1007 and SB423). Please be sure to visit act.citact.org/i45khgj to urge your legislators to oppose this outrageous subsidy.

Senate Bill 422, a bill dealing with advanced transmission technologies, which requires utilities to fully consider software or hardware technologies that increase the capacity, efficiency, reliability, or safety of an existing or new electric transmission facility during their integrated resource planning process (IRP). CAC testified in support of the bill. Anything to avoid expensive capital expenditures by ratepayers is a good step forward. The bill passed the House unanimously and heads to the Governor for his signature.

The House voted to pass Senate Bill 457 with bipartisan opposition, 55-37. SB457 addresses Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). While we are opposed to CCS generally, we were reassured by the civil penalties and the new permitting process included in the bill. This bill has become a referendum on CCS, and votes are a message to constituents as to their support of the issue as a whole.

The House also passed SB426, which speaks about several issues related to water utilities, by a vote of 76-15. Notably, the bill bars complaints from water consumers in the case of alleged exposure to contaminated water. Read more about the bill from Indiana Public Media here. The bill now heads to the Governor for further action. 

Senate Utilities had a quick hearing on Thursday with only one bill on the agenda, House Bill 1459. The bill requires all unregulated water and wastewater utilities, of which there are approximately 900, to file a report with the IURC outlining their asset management plans to ensure that the utility delivers adequate and safe service to the public. CAC supported the bill, but it was resisted by many small utilities who fear regulation and the burden the reporting requirement imposes. The bill was amended to create an alternative management plan process for utilities under 1,000 customers and allow reviews to be conducted by technical staff from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC). The bill passed committee 9-0 and heads to the full Senate for further consideration.

The House Utilities Committee amended and heard Senate Bill 4, a priority bill from the Senate Republicans addressing large water withdrawals, large water users, and pipelines of 30+ miles from the water source. The bill was motivated by the controversial LEAP District and the tremendous water needs of that project. We testified as “neutral” on the bill — mostly because of the tracker which puts ratepayers on the hook for these massive pipelines. In our testimony, we recommended that the large user (aka, data center or large manufacturer) who requires the massive pipeline assume most of the costs and risks. We also suggested that the bill add a requirement that an official field hearing be held where ratepayers can voice their concerns directly to the regulators who are considering costs that will be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. The bill was held for further discussion. 

Coming up this week

• Senate Bill 178, a silly bill that defines natural gas and propane as clean energy in Indiana law, remains on the 3rd Reading calendar in the House. The bill also includes wind, solar and other actual clean energy technologies in the definition of “clean.”

   

• Although more than half of U.S. states now get more power from wind turbines and solar panels than from the dirty, belching of coal plants, we expect the helping hand for coal, House Bill 1007, to be scheduled for a hearing soon. In addition to making it more difficult for the utilities to retire coal-fired power plants, HB1007 also includes the egregious tracker for non-existent SMRs, which is included in SB423 and SB424 as well. However, HB1007 also promises to provide meaningful protections for consumers related to the extraordinary costs necessary to meet the voracious energy appetites of data centers. Despite those protections, the bill is littered with rate increases for Hoosier ratepayers and CAC remains strenuously opposed.

   

• Since SB310 was not heard last week in the House Government and Regulatory Reform Committee due to a technicality, we plan to support it this Monday. You might recall we’ve testified in support of this measure in years past. Authored by Sen. Andy Zay, Senate Bill 310 would allow the Indiana Department of Administration to conduct energy audits of the Indiana State Government Center.

   

• We will also be testifying on Monday in the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee on House Bill 1037, which paves the way for further no-more-stringent-than policy in Indiana, barring locals from stormwater management that goes above the bar set by existing state and federal standards. HB1037 ignores our local communities' innate geographical differences. This bill is at the behest of the Indiana Builders Association, a special interest group dedicated to deregulation.

   

To follow these bills in real time, make sure you follow our social media for an up-to-date detailing of our work at the Indiana Statehouse: Facebook, X and Instagram. We tweet and post throughout the week about the progress of bills we mention in our reports.

Respectfully Submitted,

The CAC Team