* Rachel Hinton at the Sun-Times…

While most Illinoisans were sleeping, state senators advanced a sweeping overhaul of the state’s energy sector, kicking the legislation — and further negotiations — to the House.

Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, called the bill the “most complicated” piece of legislation he’s negotiated during his time in the Legislature. He believes Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch and Gov. J.B. Pritzker agree that lawmakers could get the energy proposal to the governor’s desk “in a matter of days.”

But that will require negotiations to continue and amendments to be filed in the House, which hasn’t yet set a return date to deal with the matter. […]

Exelon has initiated plans to decommission its Byron and Dresden nuclear power plants because of the lack of clean energy legislation. A spokesman for the energy company said they’re still assessing the legislation and did not immediately provide a comment.

Labor Day is Monday and Rosh Hashanah begins Monday evening and ends Wednesday evening, but Tuesday is the key date, I was told by some Jewish legislators last night (I’m not even close to being an expert here, I’m just telling you what was said). So, it appears they can’t really come back next week until Wednesday at the earliest.

Exelon hasn’t formalized the order to refuel the Byron nuclear power plant and hasn’t contracted with the approximately 1,000 workers who will be needed for that task. The company has announced a September 14 closing date, which is two weeks from yesterday.

* I asked Senate President Don Harmon last night what he thought the deadline was for passing a bill to save the nuke plants…

We had assumed it was August 31. And that’s part of the reason we came back to Springfield when we did. The governor’s office has shared with us that they believe it’s more like the 12th or 13th of the month. I hope they’re right, but I don’t want to be testing the boundaries of that deadline.

* The governor gave Harmon a list of legal issues it had with the Senate’s proposal yesterday and none were addressed in the bill. So, I asked Harmon why that didn’t happen…

Without getting too deep into the weeds, there were a host of issues raised. Some of them were fundamental to the underlying agreement among the stakeholders. Some of them seemed fairly remote and things that could be dealt with in the inevitable trailer bill. So we’re not dismissing the concerns, but I don’t know if the governor’s team understood how fundamental some of those provisions were to getting the agreement among all stakeholders. I’m not minimizing, but some of them really were things we could just wait for the inevitable collection of ticky-tack issues that we’d have to deal with.

* I asked Senate President Pro Tempore Bill Cunningham if he thought the goal posts were moved and by whom. Here’s his diplomatic answer…

I would say this, Rich, you wrote this morning that there were three primary, really steadfast goals that the governor laid out. One was a hard 2045 closure date for Prairie State. That’s in the bill. The other was closing of gas plants in 2045 without paper cover with zero emission credits. That box was checked. There was a request that there not be any late complicated add-ons or giveaways in the bill. That didn’t happen. So, those three things were achieved.

And I think because of that, we have a very good bill here. Now, we have some people who believe the bill is not good enough and would like it to be better. And they will have an opportunity to pursue that now in the House. And maybe they can make it better. I for one would like to see a faster decarbonisation schedule for Prairie State, but that’s a long way from where I live, there are no union workers from my district that are working at that plant, there are no municipalities in my district that are part of the consortium. That is not true of every legislator. Many legislators have those concerns. That is the challenge with passing this bill, that is the challenge that we’re going to face in the next couple of weeks to make a good bill better. So I’ll just leave it at that.

* The Senate’s bill earlier this week forced the municipally owned Prairie State coal-fired power plant to follow numerous carbon step-downs over the next several years and didn’t have a hard closure date in the bill. The legislation that popped in the Senate yesterday gave the governor his hard closure date, but allowed the plant to continue polluting full bore until 2045. The governor insisted yesterday on a combination of both step-downs and a 2045 (or even 2047) closure date…

An earlier draft of the energy legislation crafted by Senate Democrats would have established carbon-emission caps on the plant and an eventual closure of Prairie State if it didn’t meet those thresholds. Earlier versions of the bill left open the possibility that the facility could operate indefinitely if it cleaned up its air pollutants, a non-starter for Pritzker.

The Senate bill that passed established a 2045 closure date for Prairie State, but the governor wanted the facility to ratchet down its carbon air pollutants ahead of that date. That language wasn’t contained in the bill that passed.

* Harmon was asked why he went the way he did…

I think the question is really one of economics, and I had some good conversation with the governor and his team today. They seem to think there’s a pathway. I just objectively as an outsider, the argument why would anybody invest $4 billion in an asset that by law has to close shortly after that investment matures. It just doesn’t make any intuitive sense to me. So we had offered the first model where they would be forced to make the investment and as a result become a zero carbon entity. And then we countered with an alternative that said you just have to close on this date certain in response to the governor’s demand for for that ingredient. We are very open to being proved that some hybrid can work. It’s my intuition is just that’s going to be a real challenge.

* Natural Resources Defense Council…

Illinois now has a path to transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. It’s glaring that the bill still lacks near-term standards for the biggest polluter in Illinois, the Prairie State coal plant. Science tells us we cannot wait decades to reduce emissions from coal if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. We look to House leadership to add this simple but crucial missing piece and to pass a bill that our state can be proud of in the next few days.

* The House has not yet formally received the bill from the Senate, but I’m told the bill is dead no matter what, even though organized labor is now fully on board…

Pat Devaney, secretary-treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO, called the latest proposal a “very, very reasonable, comprehensive energy package.”

“It’s going to preserve the existing jobs in nuclear generation, it’s going to create many new jobs in the renewable energy industry, and with the changes and the compromises that have taken place, it is going to combat climate change and tackle that issue head on,” Devaney told the Senate committee.

* WCIA…

Pritzker’s office said the current version of the Senate bill would still allow the municipally-owned Prairie State Generating Company and City, Water, Light, and Power coal-fired plants to “continue polluting for 24 years with no restrictions.”

However, Harmon said the bill would make Illinois the “epicenter of the green economy,” and that the Senate had “heard loud and clear the requirements [Pritzker] would have to sign the bill,” including “a hard close of carbon emitting plants, and that there are no special deals.” […]

However, the environmental lobby argued that Hastings and other Senate Democrats had been catering to fossil fuel interests earlier in the week when they attempted to prolong the closure of municipally owned coal-fired power plants if they could invest in costly technologies to scrub, offset, or safely bury their carbon gas deep underground. […]

Senator Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) raised concerns about giving wind and solar companies too much leverage over private land rights under eminent domain, which he called “completely unconstitutional nonsense.”

“Private merchant lines get eminent domain authority over my constituents,” Rose protested. “The United States Constitution is clear on eminent domain: public use and you must pay for it. You must pay fair market value for it. Yet we’re giving private, for-profit companies the right to put up — public utilities, I guess is what we’re calling them now, even though they’re private, for-profit companies — up over my constituents homes.”

* Reuters…

Jaclyn Driscoll, a spokesperson for House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, a Democrat, said: “The Speaker has been very clear that before an energy proposal is called in the House there must be a consensus among the Democratic caucus and stakeholders, as well as include strong, meaningful ethics provisions.”

Driscoll did not respond to a question on whether the bill could be worked out in days. The House left town after the Senate passed the bill, but is expected to return in less than two weeks to approve changes to an ethics bill.

Gina McCarthy, President Joe Biden’s climate adviser, has said some existing nuclear plants are “absolutely essential” to hit U.S. goals to decarbonize the electric grid by 2035.

Incentives are included in the infrastructure bills being considered by the U.S. Congress. But Exelon has said these alone would come too late to save Byron and Dresden. The plants have more than 1,500 workers, many in high-paying union jobs.

* Center Square…

There was also opposition from the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, which said the measure will lead to the largest electric rate hike in Illinois history and will hit the manufacturing sector “extremely hard.”

“Manufacturers use one-third of all energy in the United States,” IMA President and CEO Mark Denzler said. “Manufacturers are committed to sustainability and reducing energy usage. In the last decade, manufacturers have reduced emissions by 21% while increasing output by 18%.”

The Illinois Chamber of Commerce also opposes the bill.

It’s unclear when the measure will advance.

* Crain’s…

It now is up to Pritzker and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris “ Welch to amend the Senate-passed bill, pass it and send it back. Nothing yet is settled.