* Earth Justice…

Dynegy Midwest Generation, owner of the closed Vermilion Power Station north of Oakwood, IL, disclosed Friday that riverbank erosion next to its coal ash along the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River has reached a critical point requiring reinforcement to prevent the collapse of its coal ash waste impoundment. The former power plant’s 3.3 million cubic yards of coal ash remain in the floodplain of the river, awaiting Illinois EPA approval for removal. The Agency has been reviewing the removal plan for over four years without action.

“Four years is too long to wait for a permit review. As long as the coal ash is in the floodplain, it will continue to threaten the Middle Fork,” said Andrew Rehn, Director of Climate Policy at Prairie Rivers Network. “This river bank reinforcement is a wake up call for the Agency to propose a final permit, give the public a chance to weigh in, and get this company moving the coal ash out of the floodplain of our state’s only National Scenic River.”

Dynegy’s August 4 disclosure stated that a June 30 riverbank erosion inspection revealed that the trigger line had been reached, initiating a plan to install 500 feet of rock along a critical section of the river to halt the erosion. The Safety Emergency Response Plan Dynegy submitted to Illinois EPA in 2023 established the trigger line, and requires the company to monitor and report on deteriorating conditions in order to prevent a breach of the coal ash impoundments into the river.

* Canary Media…

Illinois had big plans to turn a bunch of old coal plant sites into solar and battery farms. But the program has turned out to be kind of a bust.

The state created its Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Initiative five years ago, hoping it would speed clean energy deployment by making use of the grid infrastructure and land left behind when coal plants close — as well as replace some of the lost local tax revenue and jobs.

The program was supposed to lead to at least six significant solar and battery storage arrays and five larger stand-alone battery banks. But in the end, only three relatively small solar farms with storage were built, and no stand-alone storage, finds a new report by the University of Illinois’ Climate Jobs Institute and the nonprofit Prairie Rivers Network. […]

The researchers stressed that the lackluster results don’t mean that redeveloping shuttered coal plants into clean energy hubs is a bad idea — it’s just that the design of this specific effort didn’t make the conversion attractive for developers. The silver lining is that the results offer lessons for future coal-to-solar initiatives in Illinois and beyond. […]

The report partially chalks up the cancellations to inadequate financial incentives.

The incentives for building solar came in the form of renewable energy credits, but the companies could claim the credits only if they also built between two and 10 megawatts of battery storage on-site. Companies claim credits based on the generation from their solar array, and then sell those credits to Illinois utilities looking to meet the state-mandated target of 100% clean energy by 2030.

The state set a fixed price for the credits of $30 each. Although Vistra had pushed for a higher price, legislators figured that was sufficient, given market conditions at the time.

But the $30 ended up being too low to spark development after inflation, supply chain challenges, increasing borrowing costs, and other factors made building solar farms and batteries more expensive than expected, the report explains.