(NETWORK INDIANA) As climate change is becoming more prevalent, according to researchers, you can expect a switch in how you will be getting your energy.
Right now, Hoosiers get 73-percent of their energy from coal-fired power plants, says a study from the Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University. Lead author of the study Leigh Raymond believes coal “is basically being priced out of the market.”
“The people who should be paying attention to this is people in the commercial sector,” Raymond said to Inside Indiana Business.
He said as Indiana’s climate starts to get warmer, because of Climate Change, the demand for cooling commercial building is going to go up 5-percent by the middle of the century. He said it costs more to cool a building than to heat it.
“When you talk about that five-percent increase, that’s significant if you own a mall or a large facility that’s commercial,” Raymond explained. “That’s something they could be thinking about now, as far as future investments.”
Raymond said by 2050, it could cost commercial business owners an extra $100 million a year to cool their faculties. But, with that pricing out of coal he eluded to earlier, he said that will lead to cleaner sources of energy like natural gas becoming cheaper than they are now.
Several utility companies like Indianapolis Power and Light and NIPSCO, in northern Indiana, have already laid out timelines for shutting down cola-fired power plants and switching to natural gas fired power plants.
