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Illinois coal plants are closing even as fossil fuel objections stall energy bill again
A surprise announcement on June 17 that a coal-fired power plant in Waukegan, Illinois, will close in 2022 was bittersweet for activists who'd been campaigning for years to close the plant. Credit: CheepShot / Creative Commons
In a surprise announcement last Thursday, NRG said it would close its Waukegan and Romeoville coal plants, but the community impacts are unclear as “just transition” provisions remain held up in state energy bill negotiations.
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Discussions
Amazing how much you can get wrong in just a couple of sentences.
First of all, Romeoville has not "already been replaced" by the Three Rivers Energy Center and it never will. The Will County coal plant in Romeoville will close next year and the Three Rivers plant will not open till 2023.
However, more importantly, as you well know(I hope) the electricity from Will County coal will be replaced by electricity from the grid - not specifically electricity from the Three River plant.
In fact, if you were going to try and pretend that a specific NG plant was replacing the coal from Will County, why wouldn't you pick the Jackson Generation project? That comes online in 2022 and is right down Route 53 from the Romeoville.
When the plant enters commercial service in 2022, it will be one of the world’s most fuel-efficient natural gas power plants, offering among the lowest carbon emissions of any combined-cycle plant. The project will produce 65 percent less carbon dioxide than a legacy coal-fired power plant. Because the plant is designed to enable more uptake of renewable power, the carbon reduction will be even greater when the plant is combined with renewables. The plant will be able to cycle quickly to meet fluctuating energy demands. It also will incorporate best available control technology to minimize emissions.
There is a lot of coal retiring in Illinois over the next few years and these two new NG plants will play a part - along with renewables - in replacing the lost coal generation from all these closures.
As for carbon emissions - dropping coal generation has meant a large decline in CO2 emissions from the electricity sector in Illinois. Eliminating the remaining coal will mean a further large drop in CO2 emissions with a corresponding small rise in NG emissions.
By 2030, the 34 MMT from coal emissions in chart below could easily near zero.
Finally you also said:
Apparently renewables advocates thought it might be replaced by wind turbines, solar panels, and hamster wheels.
Over the last five years the Romeoville coal plant has averaged about 0.9TWh of generation per year. Wind and solar in Illinois are up 0.9 TWh just in the first quarter of 2021 vs prior year. What do you know, the hamster wheels have "already replaced" Romeoville.
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