Coal news and updates

Illinois, one of the nation’s largest producers of coal, is on the verge of becoming the first Midwest state to ban energy companies from burning the lung-damaging, climate-changing fossil fuel to generate electricity.

 

The end of gas-fired power might not be far behind.

 

Phasing out the combustion fuels — coal by 2035 and gas a decade later — is a key element of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s plans to move Illinois into a clean energy future. If the Chicago Democrat can muscle his legislation through the General Assembly this week, new government requirements would speed up a transition to climate-friendly electric generation and transportation that already is embraced by some in the private sector.

 

Among other things, the bill would double the state’s commitment to renewable energy, with a goal of raising the amount of wind and solar power to 40% of the state’s electric generation by the end of the decade, up from 8% in 2019.

 

Several hurdles remain, in particular opposition from five Chicago suburbs and dozens of Downstate communities that during the mid-2000s agreed to help pay off more than $5 billion in debt for the Prairie State Generating Station — one of the Top 10 industrial sources of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the United States.

 

Municipal investors in the massive coal burner, including Batavia, Geneva, Naperville, St. Charles and Winnetka, want Prairie State exempted from the governor’s fossil fuel phaseout. So does Springfield, which built a new coal plant around the same time even as private investors abandoned dozens of similar projects, scared off by skyrocketing construction costs and the likelihood that climate pollution would eventually be regulated.

 

A group of 52 state lawmakers sent Pritzker a letter during the weekend claiming that closing Prairie State and Springfield’s Dallman coal plant would make the electric grid less reliable. But the governor is adamant that the rest of Illinois should not pay for bad financial bets made by a handful of communities.

 

“Remember natural gas would stay online till 2045,” Deputy Gov. Christian Mitchell said during an interview Friday. “We recognize that ... having some baseload power that is at least less bad than coal is going to be necessary to get us (to a carbon-free future). But the idea that we need to keep coal plants online forever just doesn’t hunt.”

 

Coal-fired power plants once provided more than half of the state’s electricity but are rapidly disappearing as energy markets squeeze out aging generators in favor of cheaper, cleaner gas and pollution-free wind and solar power.

 

Outlawing what’s left of the Illinois coal fleet would dramatically reduce the state’s contributions to smog- and soot-forming pollution that triggers asthma attacks and takes years off of people’s lives.

 

It also would erase Illinois from the list of top U.S. climate polluters. Prairie State alone is responsible for more than a quarter of the greenhouse gases emitted by the state’s power sector, according to federal records.

 

“If Prairie State operates indefinitely with an exemption from climate targets, it will derail any meaningful plan for climate action in the state and the nation,” said J.C. Kibbey, a clean-air advocate for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

 

Another fiercely debated provision in Pritzker’s energy bill would pay Chicago-based Exelon nearly $700 million during the next five years to keep its Braidwood, Byron and Dresden nuclear plants open.

 

Commonwealth Edison’s parent company already gets up to $235 million a year in subsidies for its Quad Cities and Clinton nuclear plants. The possibility of another bailout doesn’t sit well with some legislators, who oppose charging ratepayers again to benefit Exelon after ComEd admitted in federal court that it engaged in a yearslong bribery scheme to advance the company’s agenda in Springfield.

 

New subsidies would cost the average residential power customer about 80 cents a month, according to a memo drafted by Pritzker’s aides.

 

The energy legislation also would require residential power customers to pay $1.22 a month to subsidize renewable energy development, and another 86 cents a month to expand home-weatherizing programs for low-income customers.

 

From a health and climate perspective, keeping the state’s carbon-free nuclear plants open for at least a few more years would help block new gas-fired generation and stabilize the grid as more wind and solar power comes online.

 

New York illustrates how clean energy goals can be upended when existing nukes are taken offline. The Indian Point nuclear plant once provided more electricity than all of the wind turbines and solar panels in the state combined. After it closed in April, most of the electricity it generated was replaced by gas plants, federal records show.

 

Meanwhile, a recent study by Harvard University researchers found that a shift away from coal in Illinois during the past decade saved thousands of lives and dramatically reduced health impacts from breathing particulate matter, commonly known as soot. But the numbers declined only slightly for gas, which by 2017 accounted for the greatest health risks.

 

Pritzker already compromised on his target to phase out coal, giving Prairie State, Dallman and three plants owned by NRG Energy five more years to operate beyond the 2030 deadline in an earlier draft of the energy legislation. The latest version would enforce increasingly stringent caps on the amount of carbon dioxide allowed from fossil fuel plants, mirroring President Joe Biden’s plan to shutter all U.S. coal plants by 2035.

 

Researchers say the federal and state goals would be relatively easy to achieve, albeit with a few exceptions.

 

Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment