‘Huge hole.’ Impending nuclear standstills rattle Ill.

As in other school districts across the country, COVID-19 logs were at the fore in Byron Community School District # 226 in northern Illinois when classes began last week.

But another potential problem looms for the district officials: the future of the giant nuclear power plant 10 minutes south by car.

Exelon Corp.’s 2,300-megawatt Byron, a top 10 nuclear power plant in the US, is less than a month away from decommissioning unless lawmakers intervene. Depending on who you are listening to, the reasons for this are falling electricity prices or a market failure to adequately assess the CO2-free electricity that the twin reactors produce.

The closure would primarily hit the local school district, which makes more than 70% of its budget dependent on the facility. But the economic wave would span the entire county, sharing $ 400 million in property tax receipts and other economic benefits associated with the facility.

“It’s going to leave a huge hole,” said Byron, Illinois, Mayor John Rickard. “In a rural community with only about 5,000 inhabitants, you pull the plug and that’s a huge hole.”

The threat to Byron is that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D) seeks to get the state on a path to 100% carbon-free energy. Byron is among several nuclear power plants that have closed in the U.S. in recent years, with more planned for early retirement or financial risk, despite President Biden’s goal to eliminate carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2035. From Vermont to California, communities that hosted once prosperous nuclear power plants are now facing profound economic downturns as they shut down.

Fears and worries have built up in northern Illinois since Chicago-based Exelon announced plans to close the plant without legal relief a year ago, Rickard said. And while the federal infrastructure bill, backed by Biden and passed by the Senate earlier this month, provides $ 6 billion in relief efforts for ailing reactors, the financial boost wouldn’t come in time to keep the Illinois plants running (Energywire, Aug. 10) .

Chris Crane, CEO of Exelon, said on the company’s quarterly results conference call earlier this month that he was unwilling to postpone retirement any longer.

“We do not want to close these plants, but we cannot make decisions based on hopes of future legislation,” said Crane. “We have been doing this since 2016, with significant losses. We have to act according to the economic facts as they exist today. “

Company representatives declined to comment specifically on the current status of the legislative negotiations. But local leaders have been pushing for months for state lawmakers to agree on aid to the nuclear power plants – something they did this spring after months of controversial debate. Pritzker also signed $ 694 million in Installment Aid to help the Byron and nearby Dresden factories stay online for the next five years.

Nuclear regulation was an integral part of a comprehensive energy and climate bill that petered out in the final days of the General Assembly due to a disagreement on how to manage an exit from coal and gas-fired power plants (Energywire, June 2). The political stalemate lasted through the summer as two major democratic constituencies – organized workers and environmental groups – were unable to reach an agreement.

The impasse caused MP Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), Whose district includes the Byron and Dresden plants, to request the White House to intervene to support the plants, citing the Defense Production Act or the Federal Energy Act.

“The decisions you and your administration will make on these matters in the coming days will have a significant impact on the future of American energy and climate policy,” he said in a letter to Biden on Monday.

Exelon officials said only the Illinois general assembly can act in time to save the Byron and Dresden plants.

‘Substantial Progress’

While the clock is ticking in Byron, Illinois lawmakers face another deadline at the end of the month.

According to the Illinois Power Agency, an estimated $ 317 million would be repaid to customers for providing solar incentives if not spent by Aug. 31, 2020 (Energywire, Dec. 7, 2020).

The solar industry has been asking lawmakers for more than a year to pass a bill that will allow funds to be transferred for this intended purpose. But the legislature has so far signaled that it will only work with a bus energy bill that is still pending.

With the solar industry on hold and Byron’s twin reactors about to begin the coast-down process that will result in a permanent shutdown on September 13, the parties at the negotiating table are once again hoping to reach a compromise.

Adding momentum: The General Assembly is due to hold a special session on Tuesday to review legislative plans following the release of US census data.

The parties say they could have an energy bill to vote on by then.

“In the past two weeks, it’s almost safe to say that we’ve made much more progress than in the previous two months,” said Pat Devaney, treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO. “We worked on it every day and made significant progress on a compromise.”

Jack Darin, director of the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club, is also encouraged.

“I think there is definitely a new urgency to work out a bill that can be passed before these important nuclear dates and maybe even by the end of this month,” Darin said.

For his part, Pritzker, who is aiming for a second term and has promised climate protection, insists that the state must switch to cleaner energy.

“Any decarbonization framework must aggressively move Illinois beyond the status quo,” the governor said in a letter to a group of unions earlier this month.

But he too sounded optimistic last week. Speaking to a group of climate activists at the Illinois State Fair, Pritzker said, “Guys, we still have work to do, but we’re 97% on the way.”

Fossil Fuel Dilemma

The dismantling and closure of fossil fuel power plants in Illinois was the crucial sticking point between the unions and the coalition of environmental groups, each of which pushed ahead with competing bills this spring.

The proposal under discussion would include the closure of coal-fired power plants in the state by 2035, including the Prairie State Energy Campus. The 1,600 MW muzzle installation, an hour southeast of St. Louis, started operations less than a decade ago. Its owners – public utilities and rural power cooperatives across the Midwest – withheld the idea of ​​closing it for more than a decade before the bonds to fund the $ 5 billion plant were paid off.

The bill would also require natural gas-powered power plants to be shut down by 2045. But it also includes falling caps on greenhouse gas emissions, which could force fossil fuel power plants to shut down earlier than the legal deadlines.

That was worrying enough that the developer of the $ 1.3 billion combined cycle power plant Three Rivers, under construction an hour southwest of Chicago, threatened to immediately unplug the project – and hundreds of union jobs – if the law would be passed as it was drafted.

The facility is not expected to be operational before 2023, and developer Competitive Power Ventures Inc. told Crains Chicago Business that proposed CO2 caps would threaten the facility’s viability before the 2045 date if gas facilities were to be phased out.

Devaney of the Illinois AFL-CIO said the bill would immediately shut down cleaner-burning fossil fuel power plants like Three Rivers, cost the state high-paying jobs, and leave Illinois to buy from outside the state with no generation or dirty electricity.

“We know the power room will move away from fossil fuel power generation,” he said. “But can we make it a little more rational and orderly?

“The difference is the process we use to get there.”

Another sticking point between workers and environmental groups is prevailing wage regulations and labor standards, although both sides indicated last week that they are very close to compromise.

In an August 2 letter to the governor and lawmakers declaring negotiations with unions stalled, the environmental coalition said it had approved labor standards proposed by the unions for 96% of new renewable energy projects.

Environmental groups, however, sought a temporary prevailing wage split for some minority-owned companies and smaller projects.

With all the optimism that an agreement could be reached by the end of the month, Rickard and others at Byron continue to call, write, and email lawmakers as they have for over a year.

But frustration is growing for the mayor and others as they know a political argument over something that could happen in a decade or two could see Exelon pull the plug on the Byron plant next month.

“That’ll happen in three weeks,” said Rickard. “You have a decade and a half to deal with coal and gas.”

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