House passes energy bill with labor, environmental groups on board
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[September 10, 2021]
By JERRY NOWICKI
Capitol News Illinois
jnowicki@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois House approved
an energy regulation and decarbonization bill Thursday, a major step
forward for a wide-ranging omnibus bill that had eluded lawmakers
throughout the legislative session and the governor’s three years in
office.
The measure that aims to bring Illinois’ energy generation sector to 100
percent carbon-free by 2050 and 50 percent renewable by 2040 will still
need approval from the Senate, which planned to caucus Friday to discuss
the measure, Senate Bill 2408, before a Monday return.
It passed the House 83-33 shortly before 9:30 p.m. Thursday. Gov. JB
Pritzker quickly issued a news release saying he would sign it.
“This is what legislating is supposed to look like,” House Speaker
Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, said in closing floor debate. “It's
about good faith negotiating. It's about advocating for the interests in
our districts back home. And it's about compromise in order to arrive at
a product that benefits people in your districts, and ours.”
Environmental groups extolled the decarbonization language, which aims
to take coal, gas and other carbon-emitting power plants off the grid
between 2030 and 2045, depending on the energy source and ownership
structure.
Union groups praised the bill’s language requiring that all major
renewable construction projects must have project labor agreements in
place to hire union labor, while non-residential projects, with few
exceptions, would be required to pay a prevailing wage.
Republicans, meanwhile, warned of losses of downstate jobs, substantial
consumer bill increases and potential grid reliability issues as fossil
fuel plants are forced offline, although it passed on a bipartisan roll
call.
Decarbonization, renewables
Environmental and labor groups were in opposition on the issue of
municipal coal-fired power plants coming into Thursday. Two plants that
were at issue include Springfield’s City, Water, Light and Power, and a
plant funded by several municipalities in Illinois that is located in
Marissa in the Metro East Area, called the Prairie State Energy Campus.
The final language requires the plants to be carbon-free by 2045, either
by going offline or installing sequestration technology. By 2035,
municipal plants must cut emissions by 45 percent. If a plant doesn’t
meet that goal by the end of 2035, the power plant will have until June
30, 2038 to either retire a portion of carbon-emitting units or meet the
decarbonization goal some other way.
The bill also provides more than $600 million over five years to three
nuclear plants owned by Exelon Corporation – in Byron, Dresden and
Braidwood. The company has stated it will not refuel the Byron plant
after Monday, and it would begin decommissioning at that time, unless
the General Assembly passed legislation to ensure its financial
viability.
All told, negotiators believe the new bill is expected to raise
residential electric bills by about 3-4 percent, commercial bills by
about 5-6 percent, and industrial bills by about 7-8 percent, although
the rollout for the various programs would be staggered over time and
increases would vary by year.
The ratepayer money will fund equity programs for the clean energy
workforce and new investment in renewable energy, among other
initiatives.
It would also incentivize the transition of coal plants to solar
facilities or battery storage sites, and it permits downstate utility
Ameren to establish two utility-scale solar plants.
In a late addition to the bill, the city of Zion in Lake County, which
is the site of a closed nuclear plant, would be eligible for grants “in
proportional shares of $15 per kilogram of spent nuclear fuel stored at
such a facility,” according to the bill.
The charge on a customer bill for renewables would increase over time
from about 2 percent to 4 percent, a $360 million annual increase to
fund projects such as wind and solar.
That investment is an effort to increase the portion of the state’s
energy contributed by renewables, which is currently between 7 and 8
percent. Nuclear made up about 58 percent of the state’s electricity
generation in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration.
Downstate Republican lawmakers raised concerns that the portion of the
state south of Interstate-80, on the MISO electric grid, is served by
only one nuclear plant. The part of the state on the PJM grid, for the
most part north of I-80, has the state’s other five nuclear plants.
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Rep. Marcus Evans, D-Chicago, introduces Senate Bill
2408 on the House floor Thursday evening. (Credit:
Blueroomstream.com)
“You're not doing what you think you're doing with
this bill,” Rep. Tim Butler, R-Springfield, said in floor debate,
warning that closing the Springfield and Marissa coal plants would
make downstate reliant on out-of-state coal while putting central
Illinoisans out of work.
Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, noted in a news
conference after the bill’s passage that it requires the Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency, Illinois Commerce Commission and
Illinois Power Agency to conduct a study at five-year intervals “to
determine if there is grid reliability.”
If there are not enough renewables and nuclear power available to
keep the grid running, that means coal or gas plants could be kept
online to meet peak demand.
“I think it's very legitimate,” Hoffman said of grid reliability
concerns. “And so we built that into the bill, though, there are
reliability checkpoints every five years. That was very important to
all of us because we want the lights to go on, we want the heating
and air conditioning to work.”
Hoffman said representatives of Prairie State believe federal
subsidies will be included in an infrastructure before Congress that
will help fund carbon sequestration infrastructure at coal plants as
well.
Republicans also expressed concerns about language allowing a
private company, Invenergy, to invoke eminent domain, in seven
counties for the purpose of a single transmission line, the Grain
Belt Express direct current transmission line.
Equity, ethics, EVs
Included in the rate hike is $180 million in annual funding for the
newly-created Energy Transition Assistance Fund, which funds various
workforce initiatives.
The bill directs the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
to create the Clean Jobs Workforce Network program, which
establishes 13 hubS in different communities across the state that
rely on community-based organizations to provide job training and a
career pipeline for equity-focused populations.
Other programs include a preapprenticeship program to prepare
individuals for the renewable energy infrastructure workforce; and a
contractor incubator to aid small clean energy businesses.
It also establishes a “Climate Bank” within the Illinois Finance
Authority to help fund renewable projects, as well as a Jobs and
Justice Fund, run by a nonprofit entity, aimed at ensuring “the
benefits of the clean energy economy are equitably distributed.”
Another program aims to train individuals recently released from
incarceration for careers in the renewable energy field.
Lawmakers also noted the bill tightens utility ethics laws by ending
formulaic rate increases, strengthening economic disclosure
requirements to include spouses employed by utilities, and creating
Public Utility Ethics and Compliance Monitor to ensure utilities
comply with existing and new laws.
It will also require the Illinois Commerce Commission to investigate
whether ComEd misused ratepayer funds in connection to an ongoing
federal investigation of the company’s Springfield influence, and if
it is found that they did, the money must be returned to ratepayers.
The bill also sets a goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on
Illinois roads by 2030, aiming to do so through incentives, such as
offering rebates on the installation of charging infrastructure in
certain communities, provided prevailing wage is paid on the
construction labor.
It also creates a Displaced Energy Worker Bill of Rights, requiring
the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to give advance
notice of power plant or coal mine closures and to notify workers of
available assistance programs.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan
news service covering state government and distributed to more than
400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois
Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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