If they follow through, NIPSCO might rise in our opinion

Sunrise over the Indiana Dunes

Over the last week, the news has been flooded with some unique news from NIPSCO. It's become such a well told story you don't have to just be reading local sources to find it.. it's national news.
As the story is being told far and wide, a utility from the Midwest, one of likely 200 such utilities that fill the grid on that scale in America, made a pretty beautiful audacious decision to drop coal for renewables in every way possible by 2028.. that's a 10 year plan.. not a 40 year plan of the type that says kick the can down the road a little longer. For a utility this size, it means a lot of work. That Utility is NIPSCO, the one I have been so disgusted with for years that I started this blog to vent my spleen.
If NIPSCO goes through with this, it doesn't erase the damage they have done, not in terms of customer service, nor in terms of carbon added to the atmosphere which will take time to absorb, decades perhaps, nor in term of the health effects already inflicted by their decades of dependence upon coal, which, a bit like smoking, you had to be willfully ignorant, or not using your own powers of observation, to not realize was wrong even decades ago. But it will be an act of courage and positive decision making that one can't help but be excited about. It will be an act of not only financial sense, but of grace, sensibility, and above all, kindness, to Hoosiers, to the people beyond our borders and around the world, and to all life on this ball floating through space and time. Every inch they travel in that direction is a step to recover the world from a very bad place we have gotten ourselves into.
It's the duty of a critic to not be so consumed by hate that they can't recognize when their subject of their criticism, if they haven't recognized what they are doing wrong, as I suspect they knew for years, act upon it in a finally noble way. If NIPSCO follows through with this plan, I might not only get off of their case, I might even buy some property in Michigan City which is going to be a nice as heck town again when the cooling tower finally comes back down.
So let me say that I might someday consider myself honored to have been a critic of an institution that might in fact demonstrate courage to the dozens or hundreds of utilities who have not so far made such a bold direction their public aim. Someday I might have to eat crow for thinking these guys were the worst of the worst when what is happening here requires some amount of corporate courage.. although I have ten years to work up an appetite, something tells me they are serious.
I can make the joke that one of the cloudiest places in America might not be the place to groudbreak such an experiment, but I don't know that this is an experiment.. Them guys in Merrilville, they might be close to Chicago, but they are also close to Hebron, they think like farmers, they don't make rash decisions.. I think they know what they want to do can work.. they aren't being Elon Musk, they are just being reasonable..
and for that I thank them.. and trust me, I want this to work as much as they do..even if it means I don't get to make fun of them anymore...
https://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/nipsco-submits-blueprint-for-shift-from-coal-to-renewables/article_86a9b000-5bc0-5d7f-8883-b4d8022d916d.html
https://www.powermag.com/indiana-utility-will-close-coal-units-transition-to-renewables/
https://solarindustrymag.com/indianas-nipsco-lays-out-coal-to-renewables-plan/
May they be Merry again in Merrilville....

https://solarindustrymag.com/state-state-view-u-s-renewable-energy-2017/