By: Mark Glennon*
It’s like flying an airplane while trying to build it. That’s what critics of Illinois’ aggressive effort to shift to renewable sources for making electricity have long said
That airplane crashed faster than even they expected. Electricity bills and the risk of brownouts are jumping quickly in Illinois, and it’s not just green energy skeptics saying so.
The most significant warning came recently from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which oversees the power grid for Illinois and much of the Midwest. Their warning was contained in a recent forecast by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory authority that monitors risks to the grid, and was summarized by the Washington Post as follows:
Southern Illinois is among the most vulnerable places in the country heading into the summer, according to a newly published forecast by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a regulatory authority that monitors risks to the grid.
The area, along with large parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states linked to the regional grid, has been put on notice in the forecast that it is facing a “high risk of energy emergencies during peak summer conditions.” A major reason is that some of the coal plants that regulators assumed would keep running for another year or two are instead coming offline. Some plant operators are choosing to shut down rather than invest in upgrades for coal plants that do not fit with states’ and the federal government’s long-term goals for clean energy.
“We are seeing these retirements occur at a faster pace than expected,” said Jim Robb, chief executive of the regulatory authority. “The economics aren’t great, so coal plant operators are saying ‘uncle.’”
This map from the MISO report shows high risk areas in red, which include all of Illinois except the north.
Meanwhile, electricity costs are already spiking in much of the state, not just Southern Illinois, which local news sources have covered extensively.
For example, News 25 in Peoria reported that central Illinois consumers “will pay double for energy starting this month, as a deal mitigating costs for many communities expires, with no new contract in sight. Communities like Peoria, Morton and East Peoria all participate in municipal aggregation programs.”
And the City of Springfield already asked Illinoisans to begin cutting back on consumption in order to reduce the risks of brownouts.
That estimate of approximate 50% increase in energy costs was borne out in recent op-ed by the president of Ameren, which supplies electricity to much of Southern and Central Illinois. The “typical residential customer in the Ameren Illinois service territory is expected to see a 54% increase in their energy bill starting in June of 2022,” he wrote. “The actual impact will depend on the amount of energy used.”
How can this have happened? Illinois for decades had a competitive advantage thanks to reliable and relatively inexpensive electricity.
Multiple factors have converged to drive up prices, everyone seems to agree. They include inflation, the conflict in Ukraine, high natural gas prices and the closure of coal-fired electric power plants.
Unquestionably, however, the rush to green energy is playing a major underlying role in rising prices and capacity shortfall. Both Illinois and the federal government put a target on the back of the whole fossil fuel industry, stifling investment therein and quickening the closure of traditional power sources. And renewable sources just aren’t ready to fill the void.
Lawmakers and regulators simply blew it when matching demand against supply. As stated in the MISO report quoted above, a major reason for the brownout risk is that some of the coal plants that regulators assumed would keep running for another year or two are instead coming offline. Some plant operators are choosing to shut down rather than invest in upgrades for coal plants that do not fit with states’ and the federal government’s long-term goals for clean energy.
Power production just isn’t sufficient to reliably meet expected demand. External factors like the war in Ukraine do not explain the current capacity shortage.
CEJA, Illinois’ Clean Energy and Jobs Act, requires 100% renewable energy production by 2050, and was correctly called by its sponsors “the most aggressive, most progressive climate bill in the nation.”
It only passed last year, so CEJA’s defenders say it is not to blame for today’s mess. However, the writing was on the wall long before. It was clear that Illinois was headed in the direction CEJA took it at least since Gov. JB Pritzker made its general goals public upon taking office. It has been a similar story nationally. President Joe Biden promised in his campaign that, if he was elected, “No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill period. It ends.”
What’s the result of policy and talk like that?
The Financial Times answered that in a column this weekend. Investment in energy production from fossil fuels dropped drastically, and it can’t easily be cranked up again. Biden, at least, has changed course, but it’s too late. He “has pleaded with the country’s oil producers to open the taps and stem the surge,” says the FT. “But those calls…have largely gone unheeded as the industry insists its drilling spree days are behind it.” Far fewer drilling rigs are at work and higher prices have not spurred further investment. That means higher prices for natural gas, one of the primary fuels for power plants.
It’s just not possible to turn on the spigot quickly. That takes years, and investors need more assurance on long-term investments than a temporary political reaction.
It’s the same situation for electric power plants. There’s no quick fix for Illinois’ now apparent shortage. Pritzker has shown no concern, and basically shrugged off the issue when asked about it. There’s little he can do in the near term even if he tried. It’s also possible that he really doesn’t care. A majority of the public thinks high energy prices are deliberate as a means to choke off fossil fuel consumption, and there’s no doubt that’s true of many green energy supporters. Pritzker’s silence only increases that suspicion.
Won’t those high energy prices and brownouts shrink the economy? All the better, as many on today’s left see things. “De-growth” is a movement in itself among many green activists, as cheerily described in The Nation.
A longer term solution is available by loosening Illinois’ legal mandate to shift to 100% renewable energy. The Illinois Manufacturers Association is among many who support that change, and they have long criticized the state’s policies on renewables. “Illinois has continued to fail miserably to provide enough renewable energy, and we’ve told them repeatedly you can’t shut down coal and gas plants unless you have enough energy to backfill it, and that’s what happening now,” says Mark Denzler, the association’s president.
That loosening could include an end to Illinois’ moratorium on construction of new nuclear plants. Today, nukes supply about 55% of Illinois electricity, but they are all scheduled to be out of service by around 2050. Getting new ones built, however, would require a federal government effort to streamline the morass of regulatory and litigation hurdles nukes face, which make their construction nearly impossible.
So far, however, we’ve seen no interest in any of that from the Pritzker Administration or the ruling majority in the General Assembly. For now, it appears they haven’t yet recognized that the airplane they were trying to fly while building already crashed.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
This column was updated to change one place where the projected increase in Ameren charges was stated as doubling instead of fifty percent.
Related columns from Wirepoints:
- Lake Michigan water levels have dropped to near normal, so yet another climate explanation emerges
- Your breakfast costs 45 percent more than it did two years ago. Who’s to blame for such sky-high inflation?
- As the folly of Illinois’ new energy law becomes evident, a ray of hope breaks through
- New CUB Scandal Is Another Reason To Kill The Clean Energy Jobs Act
Gov. J.B. Pritzker told America last week on a CNN interview that President Biden has “…done a lot to revive American manufacturing. In my state, you know, we’ve seen jobs and companies coming back to the United States and to Illinois.” But the governor’s comment about Illinois is simply not true – not when you measure it by the number of Illinoisans who are actually employed. Fewer people are on Illinois’ employment rolls today than when Pritzker took office.*
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board cited Wirepoints’ analysis of the IRS’ state-to-state migration data in their latest piece documenting the annual drain of people from blue states to red states.
Ted joined Scott Slocum to talk about the 87,000 people who left Illinois in 2022, why a net number of Illinoisans leave here for any one of 40 other states each year, what the consequence of that out-migration is — including higher property taxes on those who remain, and more.
Wirepoints recently warned in a Chicago Sun-Times oped that Chicago’s pension mess was going to get worse. As Chicago’s latest annual financial report shows, that’s just what happened.
Ted joined Dan and Charles Thomas to talk about the 50/50 chance of police immediately responding to a 911 call in Chicago, the rate of out-migration from Illinois, the lack of Chicagoans’ confidence in city law enforcement, the latest on the state’s illegal immigrant crisis, and more.
TESLA free energy is coming to the nation & to the world. 6,000 new inventions that have been suppressed will make their move on the world stage in the months to come. Fear not. Pastor Gary Boyd
Great reporting and commentary. It’s easy to see why Illinois is losing population.
One of the most important characteristics of a good leader is taking responsibility for something that goes wrong. Whether it’s the guy in the White House or the one who rules Illinois, they are forever pointing their fingers (one bony, the other chubby) at something or someone else.
Who in their right mind undoes our sources of energy before the substitutes have materialized? Only those who DO NOT have the people’s best interests at heart. :/
The green energy wokesters are the problem and now they run things. Jennifer Granholm is trying on purpose to destroy our domestic energy industry. She sits on the board of directors for Proterra who makes still unproven electric buses and this our Energy Secretary? This cult is what is causing prices to blow through all projections. Energy companies are making insane profits and we are supposed to believe our leaders and their plan? This is from the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab, same group of elites. Also the same group that is assisting in the race peddling woke prosecutors… Read more »
wirepoints is suddenly politically correct,wont post my comments about JB,so buh bye
Buh bye Jabroni. Maybe next time offer up some meaningful commentary.
Three Jabroni, this was your comment. I delete childish junk like this: “Just like when he was a kid-” what happened to the whole package of Oreos”-asks mommy-“I dont know” says JB,on there way home from Jewel,and JB has crumbs on his double chin,and they only lived 5 minutes from the grocery store!”
Jabroni – your dealing with intelligent people here. If you need to express yourself go to your other social media accounts and act stupid. Mr. Glennon was right in editing your nonsense, and do me a favor huh? Add intelligence and something that has value, that will make us think. We are surrounded by immature people who can’t control themselves don’t be one yourself.. from reading your previous posts you seem to be intelligent and educated. Why dumb stuff now? Too many pops that night?
im currently in the process of installing a 150 ft windmill in my backyard,hope the county commisioner doesnt see it,oops,i forgot to get a permit,sorry neighbors,no brown outs for thee jabroni!!
The billionaire leader and his rich Democrat pals don’t care about the poor of central and southern Illinois enough to bother letting them have power-security. Their thoughts: “Let them eat cake…”
If you need proof just go on captalfax and see how they all post about screwing over southern Illinois
The Democrat party war on coal has had a lot to do with poverty downstate; next up power brownout for the region thanks to the war on coal power plants. Then I hear the usual about how horrible life would be downstate if Chicago wasn’t connected to it.
I live in Idaho and most of our power is hydro electric. My concern is why is the east coast not bothered by any electric shortage. What are their power sources? I would guess nuclear,hydro,coal and some solar. Why are they not the same as the rest of us?
They are effected by it. The top five states having power outages last year were: California, Texas, New York, Ohio and Michigan.
Nevada, the nation’s leader in solar power, had the fewest.
Here’s how it will play out. As a good citizen, even though I’m extremely irate over this situation, I will conserve energy. I won’t turn my oven on, wash clothes sparingly and keep my air conditioning set at 80°. But this is Illinois, a disgraceful number of people who dont give a damn will cancel out my efforts to conserve. They will run their oven, wash clothes anytime all day and put their air at 68°. And that is OK for them, they will even get government subsidies to do it. Do you see the problem here?
I think many of us are relatively hypocritical environmentalists. One way to help is using solar energy. Contact via http://www.GAINrenewables.com or me directly to assess your property and solar installations. As long as the Governor and his President are throwing money at the problem, you can capitalize. Chris Gould.
Yep you can call me a hypocritical environmentalist who remembers Solyndra. Yeah maybe I can capitalize going in but how much will it cost me when I have to get out because it doesn’t work. Remember the governments involved nothing they ever do works. No way.
Energy should be cheap and plentiful. There’s so much natural gas available in this country that we flare off, burn off the natural gas that comes out of the ground after drilling for oil. It’s wasted. We have more gas flares than any other country in the world. Natural gas is great too, cheap, abundant, efficient, and not bad for the environment. Our current problems are entirely, caused 100% environmentalist nonsense policies. Crazy whacko environmental policies want to bring us back to the stone age.
Natural gas WAS cheap but no longer is. At $1.24 per therm for Nicor it is 4 times that it was before Biden. New York is phasing out natural gas in new construction. If this price continues my heating bill will be way over $400 per month with the thermostat set at 64 and I have a 98.7% efficient furnace to boot. It’s true we have plenty of natural gas but it seems to be vilified now almost as much as Ivermectin.
Yet another manufactured crisis to torture citizens
Does Madigan’s interaction with Exelon affect rates too? Think about that when you get your bills.
So basically , politicians got involved and they completely screwed the pooch. But the rest of us are the ones paying for their idiotic ideas.
Yes, keep paying and paying. The whole ‘green’ thing is premature. Instead of working with our energy providers and, coordinating a gradual and considered transition from primarily fossil to primarily ‘renewable’ these idiots have chosen to abuse, denigrate, vilify, deny funding, cancel leases, shut down pipelines, and generally screw over our fossil fuel industry. Why should fossil energy providers expand their capacity when both the state and federal governments have made it perfectly clear – they don’t want or need their services effective an arbitrary date? Where’s the incentive to upgrade, expand, maintain, etc.? There isn’t any. This is the… Read more »
Spot on. #KeepItUp !
OMG!!-what will Pritzker do if his electricity shuts off and the food in his refrigerator goes!?-OMG!!-he might lose a couple of pounds if his food spoils,hate to see him drop down under 400 pounds!!
I think he could last at least 4 weeks with no food. He is safe.
Four weeks? I’d give him a few months.
He likely has a backup generator – can’t be too careful these days. His food won’t spoil.
JBs refrigerator is probably directly wired to the nearest ComEd plant
We better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago!
He eats most of his food on the way home from the grocery store. That rotisserie chicken never had a chance!
People south of I80 were forced to bailout the Nukes to keep the lights on in Chicago. If you live south of I80, Pritzker and Democrats view you as saps, knuckle draggers, and mouth breathers. Nothing changes with Democrats.
Not just south of I-80 Jack…
He views us all as saps, knuckle draggers, and mouth breathers…
Only ComEd customers paid the nuke bailout, fyi.
So, my monthly half-a-car-payment electric bill will become a half-a-mortgage-payment bill starting in June. Oh, well, at least groceries-n-gas are a bargain…. Further, I’m told that I’ll also have to plan on not having water (since in the rural world many of us have wells), AC lights, refrigeration or a stove during who-knows-when for who-knows-how-long blackouts – euphemistically called “planned brownouts”. Wasn’t it what, just three weeks ago, that Governor Tax Cheat waddled his bulk out in front of a microphone to assure us that we didn’t need to worry about any of this because we’d just buy electricity from… Read more »
Plus natural gas is a bargain at $1.24 per therm at Nicor. It’s only 4 times higher than 2 years ago. Could have been 5 times higher. I am trying to find out what to do with all the money I’m saving from the 2 cent increase that’s suspended in gas taxes. Maybe I’ll invest in the stock market. I was told it only goes up. Maybe crypto currency or https://littlethings.com/lifestyle/old-currency/3435051-10 Lots of options to invest in. I like #10 but will have to buy extra strong suspenders.
Just look at the price of coal ,for a shock it is up 800%.
I should have saved all the coal I got in my stocking at Christmas.