LINCOLN —  A Nebraska lawmaker wants to stop public power district boards from closing or altering energy generation facilities in the state, in a move that appears aimed at preventing migration from coal to other sources of power. 

State Sen. Jared Storm of David City, who introduced Legislative Bill 1026, said his bill would still allow Nebraska’s locally elected public power districts to close or alter plants if the closure was mandated by state or federal law, if the plant is “mechanically” unsafe to operate, if the facility is damaged “beyond repair” by a natural disaster or if the plant is no longer economical.

“With the current boom in AI [artificial intelligence] and data centers sweeping across the country, the demand for generation has also increased … it would therefore seem counterproductive to shut down perfectly good and functional [electricity] generation facilities,” Storm said. 

The state proposal came a few months after the Omaha Public Power District board considered and ultimately delayed plans until 2028 to shift away from coal power production in North Omaha.

The eastern Nebraska power district had plans to “modernize” the North Omaha Station, transfer two coal units to natural gas. 

The potential changes to the station caused the Pillen weighed in on the station, and Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers sued OPPD, alleging it was pursuing “environmental justice” over its mission of customer affordability and reliability. Hilgers withdrew the suit after the board backed down. 

Storm used the Omaha power plant proposal as an example of why his bill is needed, saying shutting down a power station for “environmental reasons and impacts to the local community” directly goes against the mission of public power districts.

The Republican in the officially nonpartisan Legislature said Pillen supports his bill. Storm also pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute and study that OPPD leaders used to argue the station poses no significant risk to human health or to the environment, a stance environmental experts have called misleading.

“If someone comes in and just says, ‘We want to shut this down because we don’t like coal’ … or someone says, ‘I don’t like these windmills over here, I’m going to shut them down,’ You couldn’t do that either,” Storm said. 

No supporters testified on behalf of the bill. State Sen. Jana Hughes of Seward, a Republican on the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee, questioned whether the bill is “necessary” because the station didn’t shut down. 

Zeke Rouse, a lobbyist for Spark Omaha, a group focused on revitalizing neighborhoods in the city, said the proposal would “delay the long overdue retirement of the North Omaha coal plant … a facility that has polluted nearby neighborhoods for decades and continues to harm community health.” 

Representatives from the Nebraska Public Power District and Lincoln Electric System also expressed objections to the bill, saying it undermines “local control.”

“There’s a presumption in some of the discussion here that a dispatchable unit is going to be replaced with something less reliable … [resource decisions] don’t get made overnight. Those, those go through those integrated resource planning processes,” said Shelley Sahling-Zart, General Counsel and Vice President for LES. 

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/02/06/nebraska-lawmaker-wants-to-ban-public-utilities-from-closing-altering-power-plants/