ELPC public interest attorneys and advocates work with partners across the Midwest to take on dirty coal plants, requiring them to clean up or shut down. In 2005, ELPC settled a multi-year lawsuit with Baldwin Coal plant in Illinois, requiring long-overdue pollution controls and funds for environmental projects. In 2010, we won victory after a four-year battle against a proposed coal plant in Rogers City, Michigan, where the Michigan Public Service Commission found that increasing energy efficiency and renewable resources would be more cost effective than the new plant. After we helped pass a strong air quality standard for Illinois in 2006, Chicago’s Fisk & Crawford plants found they were unable to clean up and faced increasing pressure from community groups, so they shut their doors in 2012. In 2013, ELPC represented 11 citizen groups in a suit against American Electric Power (AEP), that led to a settlement to shutter three coal plants in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio by 2015 and brought more clean energy online. In 2016, ELPC ended Peabody Energy’s flawed self-bonding, thereby reducing the risk that the company could evade financial responsibility and leave taxpayers holding the bag for clean-up costs. In 2018, when Dynegy coal plants struck a back-door deal with Governor Rauner’s Illinois EPA to double allowances for pollution emissions at their dirtiest downstate plants, ELPC shone a light on this corruption to protect the public. In 2019, ELPC and allies secured a consent decree in an opacity citizen suit against Illinois’ Edwards coal plant, resulting in the retirement of the plant and an $8.6 million fund for community projects in the Peoria area. Coal is a threat to public health and our environment, and coal is less competitive than clean alternatives like wind and solar. The Midwestern economy depends on positioning ourselves to develop the energy of the future, not the past.
Read Edwards Victory Story Here