Illinois: An Important, Bittersweet Victory
Today, Governor Pritzker will sign a comprehensive energy bill that includes a provision to protect two of Illinois’s nuclear plants from premature closure. This process came right down to the wire: the bill was passed by the Illinois Senate on Monday, the day Exelon had said would be the Byron plant’s last day of operation without legislative action.
Last year, Byron and Dresden produced twice as much electricity as all of the state’s solar and wind combined. That’s enough clean energy to power 4.5 million homes. Replacing the electricity generation from just the Byron plant would cost an estimated $29 billion — more than $6 every month for every Illinois household for the next twenty-five years. If the Dresden nuclear plant were allowed to retire in November, it would have doubled these impacts.
While the timing was far too close for comfort, the work of Illinois legislators to keep these nuclear plants operating is an amazing victory. They managed to protect thousands of high-wage jobs in clean energy in addition to maintaining affordable and reliable carbon-free electricity generation in the state.
The victory, however, is bittersweet. The horse trading required to prevent Byron and Dresden from permanent shutdown did not work out in favor of society in the long-run. Here’s why:
Fragilizing the grid in the name of climate change
From the beginning, Pritzker and environmental NGOs including NRDC, Sierra Club, and the Illinois Environmental Council wanted a legal closure deadline for all coal and gas plants in order to put the state on a path to 100 percent of electricity from wind and solar. The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition had a “burn the ships” strategy, so to speak: by passing a deadline for all fossil plants, the state would be forced to take action to replace them. There would be no going back to coal and gas in an emergency — only forward with wind and solar.
Even if the coalition had the leverage to force fossil-backed politicians to support this plan, it would be extremely dangerous for Illinois. Whenever a state or country attempts to get a significant portion of its electricity from wind and solar, trouble sets in around when the grid pushes north of 20% renewables. Catastrophic difficulties arise by the time the grid reaches about 30% renewables. Texas and California serve as cautionary tales, as both states have arrived at the point where bad weather conditions have led to severe blackouts.
To avoid blackouts and other operating issues, electricity grids need to have a sufficient amount of reliable power for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. This capacity can be provided cleanly by nuclear, or by polluting fossil fuel plants. So only by saving nuclear power does removing coal and natural gas become a plausible goal for the future of Illinois.
Rather than demanding compromise legislation from Democratic Senate President Dan Harmon to vote on and sign into law, and afterwards using the next 14 years to replace the final remaining coal plants to achieve a 2035 deadline, Pritzker and Senators backed by the big environmental nonprofits risked losing massive amounts of clean energy from the nuclear that competes with the fossil plants they want closed.
So why risk losing Illinois’s largest source of carbon-free electricity if the goal is to stop climate change? Perhaps there are objectives more important than emissions reductions. Illinois Clean Jobs originally backed a bill that would result in our nuclear plants closing rapidly — first by failing to save Byron and Dresden this year and then by keeping in place the damaging forces that will close the other plants.
The same environmental NGOs that incorrectly insisted Illinois’s nuclear plants couldn’t run past 2050 have been behind the premature closure of multiple nuclear plants around the country. Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and 350.org — all members of the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition — are explicitly opposed to clean nuclear power and have worked to shut down plants in California, Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. But none of these hold a candle to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
NRDC actively campaigned for the closure of Indian Point, New York’s largest source of clean energy, and celebrated when it was shut down this past April. Its generation has been completely replaced by fossil fuels, including dirty-burning oil. The organization also worked with California politicians to get Diablo Canyon scheduled for premature shutdown in 2025. This closure looms large, as California is struggling to get enough power to keep the lights on.
Hurting the working class in the name of social justice
The cost of shutting down nuclear plants falls heavily on the working class. Not only does it eliminate good, high-wage jobs, but it also makes electricity more expensive. Low-income households spend a greater share of their earnings on electricity than wealthier people, meaning higher energy costs disproportionately harm poorer people and families. By holding nuclear legislation hostage, the environmental faction risked significant harm to the people of Illinois.
However, this coalition was also working to harm the working class more directly with this legislation. Labor was working on legal provisions to ensure that any renewable energy built in the state provides benefits and jobs to in-state workers and communities, not just international engineering firms, banks, and hedge funds. These provisions would require the mainly seasonal construction jobs created by wind and solar farms meet higher standards than the current norm in the industry and pay a prevailing wage. The 2016 Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA) resulted in renewable energy projects given to out-of-state contractors and workers, so unions and labor groups were hoping to keep the benefits of new energy projects local.
But the NGOs and activists in the environmental camp pushed back against the labor provisions, arguing prevailing wage would disproportionately harm minority communities. “Further, [labor] continues to seek full domain over new and emerging clean energy jobs, and to shut the door on opportunities for Black and Brown contractors to stake their claim in the new energy economy,” Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition wrote in a letter to Governor Pritzker.
Labor laws like prevailing wage are important beyond ensuring workers on specific projects earn middle-class incomes. Setting a prevailing wage actually helps to lift wages throughout the community or state, reducing inequalities and disparities. Fair labor practices protect the union gains by workers and employers that they won’t be undercut by lower standards and wages through private sector bargaining. So why would the “progressive” side of the energy negotiations be opposed to this?
Wind turbines and solar panels are largely manufactured outside of the U.S., and facilities require almost no employees to operate. That leaves jobs in installation, which are temporary and comparatively low-wage. The average mid-wage worker in the nuclear industry earns over 50% more than the average worker in solar or wind, often with far better benefits.
If wind and solar projects were required to hire union labor at a prevailing wage, they would be far less lucrative than they would with low-wage, temporary labor. Due to the margins on some of these facilities, many would probably not get built. “The clean tech industry is incredibly anti-union…It’s a lot of transient work, work that is marginal, precarious and very difficult to be able to organize” said Jim Harrison, the director of renewable energy for the Utility Workers Union of America.
Luckily Labor was able to prevail and pass some of the strongest labor standards for clean energy in the country. SB2408 requires project labor agreements on all utility-scale wind and solar projects and sets a prevailing wage for non-residential renewable builds.
A dangerous path forward
This compromise legislation was absolutely necessary. It prevents the massive spike in carbon emissions that would result from the state losing two nuclear plants that reliably provide 30% of the state’s clean electricity. It prevents the ratepayers from having to pay an estimated additional $480 million per year to support the fossil fuel generation that would fill in the gap left by nuclear. And it prevents the loss of thousands of good, in-state union jobs and a tax base that funds public services across many Illinois communities.
However, the energy plan puts Illinois on a path towards 50% renewable by 2040 and 100% carbon-free by 2050. California, an early and aggressive leader in wind and solar, has seen its electricity prices rise eight times faster than the national average since 2011. Since the state’s blackouts last August, the grid operator has had to issue alerts asking consumers to ration their energy usage. And just last month it was announced that five new gas plants would be built in order to avoid blackouts in the near future. As Illinois moves further down this path, the state can expect similar hardships.
States and countries scaling up renewables are not only experiencing similar reliability and resiliency issues; they are also experiencing increasing inequality. A new study of 175 countries published in Energy Research and Social Science found that renewable energy consumption has put pressure on low-income families, resulting in increasing energy poverty. Moving Illinois from about 10% wind and solar to 50% in under two decades could devastate lower income households across the state.
By saving nuclear today, Illinois has protected thousands of good jobs in clean energy and hopefully prevented power shortages this winter. The cost, however, was a deal that favors temporary (and perhaps not-so-green) jobs and may result in blackouts in the future. This was a big, necessary win, but our work ensuring Illinois’s future is clean, equitable, and prosperous is only just beginning.
Madison Czerwinski is the Executive Director of Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal and a Women Leaders in Energy Fellow at the Atlantic Council
