Environmental Groups Applaud Supreme Court Order Making Clear that Iowa Utilities Board Has Authority to Review Coal Plant Economics Originally published on 4/28/23 in IEC's newsroom The Iowa Supreme Court issued an opinion in favor of three environmental groups’ position in a challenge to an Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) order that limited its ability to review the cost-effectiveness of MidAmerican Energy’s coal plants. The court reversed the Board’s order and sent the case back to the IUB. State law requires the IUB to evaluate MidAmerican and Alliant’s plans to manage emissions from their coal plants, as well as the costs associated with those plans. Once approved, the utilities can then recover the costs of those plans from customers. The Iowa Environmental Council (IEC), Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), and Sierra Club appealed an IUB ruling that excluded evidence showing that retiring two coal plants was a cost-effective way for MidAmerican to manage its emissions. The environmental groups provided independent analysis showing that it would be cost-effective for MidAmerican to retire two uneconomic coal plants and replace them with clean energy, rather than continuing to spend money on coal plant pollution controls at plants that are already losing money. Rather than considering that evidence, the IUB said that consideration of coal plant retirements was outside the scope of the statute — even though utilities had decided to retire coal plants as an emissions management strategy in past cases. The Board’s order indicated that it would consider coal plant retirements only where the utility proposed to do so. "The state Supreme Court’s decision is a common sense recognition that sometimes the most cost-effective way to manage air pollution is to stop emitting it," said Michael Schmidt, IEC Staff Attorney. "The Neal North and South coal plants are extremely expensive sources of electricity, and the evidence shows that the least-cost way to manage their emissions is to retire the plants." | 
