Post-Tribune op-ed: Blackstone profits from NIPSCO

Guest column: Blackstone profits from NIPSCO rates, data centers

The following op-ed by PESP  communications director Matt Parr published in February in the Post-Tribune:

Like thousands of other families across Northwest Indiana, I open my NIPSCO bill each month with a knot in my stomach. The numbers keep climbing. Neighbors talk about choosing between groceries and utilities. Small businesses wonder how much more they can absorb. People are angry, and they have every reason to be.

Most of that anger is directed at NIPSCO. The company sends the bills, requests rate increases, and answers to regulators. As a NIPSCO customer myself, I understand that frustration. But there is a key part of this story that rarely comes up in public conversations.

A major Wall Street private equity firm profits from NIPSCO, and many customers have no idea.

In 2024, Blackstone, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, acquired roughly a 20 percent ownership stake in NIPSCO’s parent company. A senior Blackstone executive now sits on NIPSCO’s board. Blackstone has made utilities a central part of its infrastructure strategy.

Blackstone is headquartered on the East Coast and manages $1.3 trillion in assets worldwide, far removed from the day-to-day realities of households and small businesses across Northern Indiana. Yet at town halls and protests over rising bills, you rarely hear Blackstone mentioned. The focus stays on NIPSCO.

How many NIPSCO customers even know Blackstone has a seat at the table? That information gap matters.

Utilities like NIPSCO operate as quasi-monopolies. Customers cannot choose a different provider if prices rise or service worsens. That lack of choice is why utilities are heavily regulated and expected to put affordability, reliability, and the public interest first.

Private equity firms operate under a very different set of incentives. Their business model is built around generating strong returns for investors, often by squeezing more profit out of existing assets. When that model enters an essential service like electricity, customers deserve to understand what it means.

Over the past year, NIPSCO customers have experienced some of the steepest bill increases in Indiana. Those increases have sparked protests, packed meetings, and growing public organizing across the region. People are asking a straightforward question: why are our bills rising so fast, and who benefits when they do? That disconnect between who pays the bills and who profits from them helps explain why so many customers feel frustrated and unheard.

Those questions became especially urgent last year when two massive data centers were proposed for Union Township. The developer was QTS, a data center company owned by Blackstone.

The same Blackstone that profits from NIPSCO.

At standing-room-only public meetings, residents raised concerns about land use, infrastructure strain, and electricity costs. Local officials and community members explicitly connected data center development to rising utility bills and to NIPSCO’s relationship with Blackstone. Many worried they would end up paying for grid upgrades and new power generation needed to serve energy-hungry data centers, while the profits flowed elsewhere.

After months of public opposition, QTS withdrew its proposal.

That decision helped make something abstract feel concrete. When the same firm profits from both a monopoly utility and energy-intensive development, people rightly start asking harder questions about whose needs come first. Those questions are now being raised far beyond Northern Indiana.

In Washington, U.S. senators have pressed Blackstone and other large investment firms to explain how their push into utilities and AI-driven data center infrastructure could affect consumers. Lawmakers have raised concerns about rising power bills, transparency, and whether utility customers will be left paying for massive infrastructure projects tied to speculative demand.

Blackstone itself has described utilities and power infrastructure as central to its strategy for capitalizing on the AI boom. Electricity is an essential service. When financial strategies built around artificial intelligence intersect with monopoly utilities, the consequences land on families, seniors on fixed incomes, and small businesses trying to keep the lights on.

Blackstone’s involvement at NIPSCO also goes beyond a financial stake. Sebastien Sherman, a Senior Managing Director in the Infrastructure Group at Blackstone has sat on NIPSCO’s board since 2024 and helps oversee its direction. Sherman “leads investment and origination in the transportation and utilities sectors in the Americas” for Blackstone and described himself as leading the firm’s investment into NIPSCO.

If most customers don’t know who profits from their utility bills, how can they judge whether the system is working for them? What does accountability look like when the biggest financial beneficiaries stay invisible?

NIPSCO residential customers have been hit hard in the two years that Blackstone has owned a stake in the company. Last year NISPCO customers saw a 26.7% increase in bills, adding to a 17.8% hike in 2024. Many are struggling to keep up. In that context, transparency and accountability matter more than ever. Customers deserve to know who profits from their utility bills, what incentives shape utility decisions, and how those incentives align with the long-term needs of the communities NIPSCO serves.

Our public utilities are too essential, and the stakes are too high, for Hoosiers to be in the dark about how an out-of-state, trillion dollar Wall Street firm is profiting from their bills.