*** UPDATE 1 *** The Senate Democrats just told me the chamber is returning a week from today.
…Adding… Press release…
The Illinois Senate will return to session on Tuesday, June 15 for the purpose of voting on clean energy legislation that Gov. JB Pritzker negotiated to set Illinois on a path to a nation-leading renewable energy plan.
“This is a landmark clean energy plan that both protects thousands of jobs and moves Illinois responsibly toward the future,” said Illinois Senate President Don Harmon.
It is expected that the Senate session will be one day only.
Hearing the House will come the following day, but that’s not yet solid.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Speaker Welch…
“As I indicated before we adjourned on the final day of session, the House is expected to return next week on Wednesday, June 16 to take care of some final-action legislation. Items such as the energy proposal, unemployment insurance, and an elected school board for Chicago will be at the top of our list. We were able to accomplish big things this legislative session, and I’m eager to keep that spirit alive in a quick special session next week.”
* Steve Daniels at Crain’s…
Senate President Don Harmon said [Monday] that he expects a vote in his chamber as early as next week on the wide-ranging energy bill that was the subject of frenzied negotiation at the end of the session.
Harmon, D-Oak Park, said he didn’t expect there to be changes to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s insistence that all coal-fired plants in Illinois shut down by 2035, despite the entreaties of municipally-owned utilities that are on the hook past that date to pay for the Prairie State plant built a little over a decade ago. Those utilities, and unions representing workers at the plant in Marissa, Ill., about 40 miles southeast of St. Louis, continue to lobby lawmakers to permit the plant to stay open longer. […]
“I think enough of the members that were concerned about (Prairie State) have come to terms with the 2035 date,” Harmon said in an interview. […]
Observers believe that enough support in the House is virtually assured, so the Senate remains the primary question mark. Harmon’s remarks today provide more assurance that the biggest state energy package since the deregulation of the generation industry in the late 1990s will pass.
* SJ-R…
A coalition of unions, utility officials and Democratic and Republican lawmakers from central and southern Illinois called on Gov. JB Pritzker and legislative leaders Friday to exempt nonprofit coal-fired plants from mandated 2035 closures in an upcoming clean-energy bill.
“Springfield already is doing the right things to transition to a ‘zero-carbon’ future,” Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder said at a news conference at the Steamfitters & Plumbers Local 137 hall in Springfield.
Doug Brown, chief utility officer of Springfield’s municipality-owned City Water, Light & Power, said it is “not feasible” for the utility to close all of its coal-fired units in 14 years without the potential for higher electricity bills for consumers and shortages of power downstate that could lead to “brown-outs” and electricity restrictions.
Stop with the scare tactics, already. This state has a glut of electricity…
Illinois is the third-largest net electricity exporter among the states, and typically sends about one-fifth of the power it generates to other states via the interstate transmission lines. […]
Coal-fired power plants have been the second-largest electricity providers in Illinois for the past decade. However, coal’s contribution to in-state generation has declined, dropping to 27% of generation in 2019 as more than a dozen older coal-fired generating plants have shut down. Others are being considered for closure, in response to stricter emissions regulations and economic pressures. Natural gas-fired generation provided slightly more than 10% of the state’s net generation in 2019, an all-time high and about four times more than in 2008. Wind energy accounts for almost all the rest of the state’s net generation.
The real issue is the mismanagement of the local electric power supply…
[Springfield] owes about $36.6 million annually on bond payments, Brown said.
- Blue Dog - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 12:58 pm:
Rich. I know I’m old and don’t read so well, but when I read that link I couldn’t find where that glut of electricity is .
- Blue Dog - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 12:59 pm:
Never mind….
- Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:05 pm:
I forgotten we have an Illinois Senate in the past session… except when they seemingly do their business at odd times with odder rationale to the timing of things.
- Alan Medsker - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:15 pm:
Yes, we do export power (wouldn’t call it a glut, but, whatever), but any generators that are taken off line have to be replaced by something that can do the same thing. Wind and solar do have a place but they’re not great choices to replace reliable generation like that we get from coal, gas, nuclear and hydro. So if we do turn off some big generation assets like Prairie State (which is a really big plant), *something* will need to be able to pick up that slack immediately. While it’s a stretch these days, I’m gonna say that in spite of all the naysayers, a nuclear replacement for Prairie State would be ideal, since it could deliver the same scale and reliability as the current plant, and do so cleanly and with a miniscule amount of waste compared to what we have to deal with now.
So yes, turn it off, but let’s make sure it gets a replacement that actually improves our situation by reducing emissions, preserves significant investment (TX from the plant site, cooling etc.), reliability and jobs. There are on-deck designs that could do this quite well, and do it well within the timeframe for a 2035 retirement of Prairie State and other FF plants.
Repeal the moratorium (which serves only to tie our hands regarding new clean energy), make additional legislative adjustments and make no small plans.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:17 pm:
===wouldn’t call it a glut===
lol
Third largest net exporter, 25 percent of all electricity produced goes elsewhere.
- sladay - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:21 pm:
That’s good that they are returning. Would they be voting on the gaming Bill too?
- Give Me A Break - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:40 pm:
Standby for the well thought out comments from those giants of public policy, Chuck Redpath and Ralph Hanauer.
Without a doubt they will find a way to blame Springfield’s mismanagement on Chicago, JB and efforts to control gun violence because as Springfield’s leading voices on moral outrange, they have to feed the Springpatch voters their daily dose of “we are all victims of Chicago”.
- Chicago Cynic - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:43 pm:
“wouldn’t call it a glut, but, whatever”
Illinois has been a net exporter for decades. We overbuilt so much that we continue to have a glut despite closing down gigawatts of coal over the last decade. We’re still in splendid shape, so no, we don’t need to replace everything we shut down. More wind and solar are going to come online every year so, despite their intermittency, we’ll be fine for quite some time to come.
- NIU Grad - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 1:48 pm:
This is one of those things that will involve short-term pain for municipalities for a long-term payoff, as the coal industry continues to slowly go down the tubes.
- Grandson of Man - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:03 pm:
Looking very forward to it and hope it goes through. CO2 levels are at an all-time high. Everybody should be pushing for healthier energy sources and helping workers transition to clean energy industries. We give the richest corporations and individuals billions in unneeded government handouts, surely we can invest in training workers.
- Anyone Remember - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:15 pm:
=== … so no, we don’t need to replace everything we shut down.===
Reducing capacity, ceteris paribus, will result in higher prices.
- Ok - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:18 pm:
The only reason to do a big energy bill is to do something about climate change. If it isn’t about that, then it is not worth the effort.
- Alan Medsker - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:18 pm:
=== Rhird largest net exporter, 25 percent of all electricity produced goes elsewhere.===
Well aware, sorry. My point which I did not expand on was that it matters to the region, our state does not sit in a vacuum. Prairie State runs at a pretty high capacity factor, and it’s a big plant. *some* generator, inside or outside the state, WILL have to take over that power generation. And I don’t think of it as “glut”, to my original point, but rather as reserve generation capacity (which is key to riding out high-demand and high-outage situations, as TX found out). Bottom line, our excess is counted on by someone, somewhere, so even if *we* don’t need to replace firm resources, someone will need to do that for us. Maybe that’ll be good if it’s gas instead of coal, but burning gas is still pretty horrible, not necessarily be that much better than coal, depending on who you ask.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:28 pm:
So the argument from Exelon is that the nuke fleet isn’t economically viable to operate and needs to be subsidized by ratepayers/taxpayers.
Our elected officials’ answer is to give them another bailout, eliminate their competition and put almost our entire grid at the mercy of energy that the taxpayers will have to indefinitely subsidize to keep on line. Just imagine when Exelon comes back next time.
Seems very Illinois even for Illinois
- thisjustinagain - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:30 pm:
So, when did they files the necessary papers to call the session?:
(25 ILCS 15/1) (from Ch. 63, par. 191) Or is this another old rule that one chamber can meet outside of a regular session?
- Give Us Barabbas - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:35 pm:
The nuke fleet is rapidly aging out with no base load capacity to replace it. Wind and solar are not a complete answer. Energy net exporter today, but maybe not for much longer… And that will hurt our economy.
- Cardinal Fan - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:40 pm:
This is not good for central and southern Illinois. Prices are going to increase for power, and it will significantly hurt the small co-ops that exist in Illinois outside of the Chicago area. As several have said, wind and solar are not efficient alternatives for long-term sustained power supply.
- Rich Miller - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:41 pm:
===but maybe not for much longer===
And it ain’t gonna be replaced with coal.
- Chris Wetterich - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:50 pm:
I wrote a story for the SJ-R before CWLP built its most-current coal plant in the mid-2000s, questioning whether it should be built given potential future environmental regulations regarding carbon dioxide. The Davlin-Renfrow administration, predictably, brushed off those questions. They believed Dallman 4 would be a cash cow. It hasn’t been. Those guys knew how to party, but it was often amateur hour when it came to public policy.
That being said, I’m not sure selling a 30-year bond on an asset that typically would last a decade or two beyond that constitutes *financial* mismanagement.
- illinoyed - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:50 pm:
Worth mentioning that the planet is literally cooking right now. Highest Co2 levels ever. And folks want to debate if it’s worth a couple bucks a month to try to do something about that.
- Third Reading - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 2:51 pm:
-thisjustinagain-
Paperwork filed today.
Next conspiracy …
- Glass half full - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 3:00 pm:
Mr. Medsker, the problem in Texas was not the capacity of the system. It was the fact that inches of ice formed on the gas infrastructure, locking it mechanically. Don’t need a power plant located where Prairie State is for grid reliability purposes. It’s located there because Peabody had a mine there.
- Alan Medsker - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 3:16 pm:
===It’s located there because Peabody had a mine there. ===
Of course, indeed it is. Just saying that any lost capacity is going to matter, somewhere, somehow. We do have extra capacity, I just think we should not just flippantly retire it without concrete plans for what replaces it, at least on a broader scale. High RE environments like CA and DE are not doing well WRT retail pricing and general grid reliability. While certainly you can have too much, generally, excess capacity is there for a reason, and that is not an Illinois-only thing, it’s a PJM thing.
- JM - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 3:38 pm:
@AlanMedsker…look to South Carolina for your answer on the potential for nuclear replacement of Prairie State. Not gonna happen.
- JLW - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 3:46 pm:
MISO declared a capacity advisory for today in the region Illinois is in. That region has also become a net importer of energy. Your info is out of date that we have a ‘glut’ of energy and is only looking at the Chicago grid. Not downstate.
- Alan Medsker - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 3:51 pm:
====
So the argument from Exelon is that the nuke fleet isn’t economically viable to operate and needs to be subsidized by ratepayers/taxpayers.
Our elected officials’ answer is to give them another bailout, eliminate their competition and put almost our entire grid at the mercy of energy that the taxpayers will have to indefinitely subsidize to keep on line. Just imagine when Exelon comes back next time.
Seems very Illinois even for Illinois
====
Welcome to electricity markets, which care only about pricing and nothing else. FF plants get to pollute without paying for the privilege, solar and wind get to be unreliable without having to pay for it.
Are you concerned about the ratepayers getting charged a billion $ or so for solar installations that collectively provide basically zero juice to our grid (via FEJA bill)? Exelon got about the same amount to keep Quad and Clinton open, which produce MUCH more than that, and which are ultra-reliable, and they kept their end of the deal (and our electricity prices even went down a bit).
So, who got bailed out there? For my money, the nukes delivered a lot more value.
As long as you have merchant electricity markets, where the (really bad) idea is to treat electricity as a commodity, you will have all kinds of rules, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, etc. all of which are there to try to fix some broken part of the “market”, which will always be stupid about actually incenting and delivering what we want and need.
- Chicago Cynic - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 3:53 pm:
“ Reducing capacity, ceteris paribus, will result in higher prices.”
Not when demand is declining and renewables save $1.3 billion over the next ten years which is what the Pruitt study found.
- Senator Clay Davis - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 4:21 pm:
@AlanMedsker - Why are you whining about the bill? Your guys are getting bailed out. Stop being a sore winner.
- Joe Schmoe - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 4:29 pm:
If you take something offline, you had better have something to replace it. I don’t see anyone building nuclear power plants and there’s not enough farmland to convert for wind and solar power generation. Besides, the cows go loony and quit producing milk when the turbine blades are turning…
- Senator Clay Davis - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 4:40 pm:
==Besides, the cows go loony and quit producing milk when the turbine blades are turning==
Dude, we just give em tinfoil hats. Problem solved.
- thisjustinagain - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 4:55 pm:
To Third Readings “next conspiracy…” comment.
I never said, nor implied, inferred, or suggested that there was conspiracy. Not even close. But thanks for chiming in. SMH.
- Suburbanon - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 5:04 pm:
Add a few million to the budget to help CWLP and Prairie State find alternatives to coal. I have no idea what those alternative are, but technology is evolving quickly, so give innovation a push. Enlist the engineering departments at SIU & UIUC to work on the problem.
- Scott Thomas - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 5:09 pm:
What about the carbon price? Does anyone know that it is definitely not in the bill?
- MyTwoCents - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 5:17 pm:
As Chris Wetterich alluded to, back when the new additions to the plant were being built CWLP thought that the electricity prices would stay high enough to make a killing selling electricity on the open market. Then the prices crashed and over a decade later we’re still paying for that gamble.
- Amber Sabin - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 5:56 pm:
==Stop with the scare tactics, already. This state has a glut of electricity… Illinois is the third-largest net electricity exporter among the states, and typically sends about one-fifth of the power it generates to other states via the interstate transmission lines. ==
It’s not a scare tactic. It’s apparently a misunderstanding. Energy grids do not follow state boundaries—they are complex series of electric delivery systems that must be balanced. Most importantly, there is a difference in the MISO territory of grid–includes downstate; and the PJM territory of the grid–northern IL where most baseload energy comes from nukes. This downstate territory of MISO is in fact a net-importer.
- AndyIllini - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 6:10 pm:
=Not when demand is declining=
Demand is currently declining, but so is population and EVs have not been widely adopted. Hopefully both of those trends reverse, and if so, you cannot at all count on declining demand.
- Ok - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 8:09 pm:
It’s not a misunderstanding, Amber. MISO Zone 4 in Central / Southern Illinois is connected with a dozen other states, and the more than a dozen PJM states it can import from. Texas, California, Hawaii it ain’t.
The MISO portion of Illinois is still a net exporter of energy, but now imports during peak hours … primarily because plants in the region are selling their capacity into PJM because they can get more money there.
There is no demonstrable evidence that the Springfield plant is essential for reliability. There are no inertia, voltage, or other issues on the grid serving Springfield.
The only reason that unit still exists is because you had people in Government who thought they were in business, and want to hide the fact that they made terrible decisions and saddled their constituents with debt payments for monorails that are killing the planet.
We give Daley a hard time for the parking meters, but these late 2000s coal projects were by far the bigger boondoggles.
- It Seems To Me - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 8:41 pm:
Ok ==MISO Zone 4 is connected…it can import==
Check your facts. MISO had a generation capacity advisory out today, and NERC has warnings out already for this zone for generation shortfalls this summer and that’s assuming coal and gas plants are still running. Your premise is false that downstate can just import in all what’s needed. Vistra plants will start closing well before 2030—they have no skin in the game anymore. So let’s be thankful for Indiana and MO to serve us up some cheap and dirty energy while we wait for the windmills and solar panels to become reliable 24,7.
- Rutger Hauer - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 8:55 pm:
What’s remarkable about the energy bill is the lack of concern for ratepayers whether residential, commercial and industrial. For the most part, they’ve been excluded from the discussions. The belief of the General Assembly appears to be - trust us. Most folks forget that FEJA - passed in 2016 - is backloaded with automatic rates increases which begin this year. Now the GA layers on additional unknowns - all in the name of climate change (which is real and important) while 350 coal-fired power plants are under construction. They include seven in South Korea, 13 in Japan, 52 in India, and 184 in China with the rest underway in other parts of the world. The bill will make folks feel good but won’t do anything about climate change. https://www.canadianenergycentre.ca/commentary-china-is-building-184-coal-plants-guess-what-that-will-do-to-carbon-emissions/
- Going nuclear - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 9:31 pm:
The price we pay for electricity generally does not reflect the “true costs” of producing it. The carbon pollution is an external cost because it causes climate impacts that neither the plant owners nor the electric users pay for.
Both Prairie State Energy and Springfield Dallman #4 should have been equipped with carbon capture and storage systems when they were built. No more “free lunch” for these two coal plants. Install CCS systems by a date certain or shut down the plants.
And for those of you who are concerned about the intermittent nature of wind and solar energy, the commercialization of large-scale battery storage is much closer than you think.
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2021/06/primergy-solar-constructing-600-mw-solar-storage-portfolio-for-nevada-utility/
- Biker - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 10:16 pm:
Rutger, your facts are out of date regarding South Korea and Japan. Major changes just this year alone in their coal outlooks. India and China are still wildcards, but the rest of the world is with us in shutting down coal plants. Big banks aren’t going to be funding them anymore. Smart money is on renewable energy installations. We haven’t even scratched the surface on solar PV installations in Illinois, and the biggest benefit is for solar plus wind to create reliable base load. Land of opportunity.
You gotta practice what you preach. Global warming is real as you affirmed. And closing down any actively used coal plant does mitigate damage, especially the largest in the state and #7 in the country. If Springfield gets better air quality out of it, well I guess that “will make folks feel good.”
And if Peabody shuts down the mine, then that coal doesn’t get burned. And if that mine gets shut down then maybe other states will shut down their mines since domestic usage is no longer subsidizing the mining industry and the true cost of cleaning up these coal ash pits will give a real apples to apples cost beyond the $3.50 a Watt for capacity plus the $40/ton compared with $1/Watt solar PV. Coal ash needs to be cleaned up whether it’s been done in the past or not. So no, just because Chinese and Indian governments haven’t learned their people need to breathe doesn’t mean we need to compete on hellscape air quality.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
- Anyone Remember - Tuesday, Jun 8, 21 @ 11:20 pm:
===Not when demand is declining … .===
Elon Musk has bet against that …
- Roads Scholar - Wednesday, Jun 9, 21 @ 5:15 am:
I believe all of the legislation on the table to date has had “out’s” on mandatory closure if needed for reliability purposes. PJM and MISO don’t let you close an asset if it’s going to compromise the grid. Rarely a problem in markets this big. So why the hand-wringing?
- Roads Scholar - Wednesday, Jun 9, 21 @ 5:21 am:
“They’ll get cheaper power from Indiana”
EVERYONE’S closing their coal plants.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/vectren-bucks-indiana-legislature-with-plan-to-reduce-coal-mix-78-to-12-b/579956/
Investor-supported utilities want to get out of coal.
Public-supported coal plants are dawdling about a decad behind the markets. And their customers are paying the price for their ineptitude. Spoken as a CWLP ratepayer.