The Illinois legislature’s session ends at the end of the month, and the best hope for renewable advocates appears to be Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Consumers and Climate First Act. If passed, the bill is less robust than the Clean Energy Jobs Act but would eliminate coal-fired power by 2030 and natural gas by 2045.
With the deadline quickly approaching, familiarize yourself below with the latest in Illinois with this excerpt from PV Magazine.
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“The bill calls for the phasing out of both coal- and gas-fired power, with coal set to be gone by 2030 and natural gas by 2045. Within these phase-out targets, the bill also includes plant-specific declining caps on emissions that would lead to plant closures and a carbon tax starting at $8/ton and escalating 3% each year.
Pritzker’s bill is a compromise of sorts, with targets that are less ambitious than the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which calls for decarbonizing the power sector by 2030, but more ambitious than the proposed Path to 100, which calls for 40% renewables by 2030 and does not include a firm date for moving to 100% renewable energy.
Compromise or not, the consensus in Illinois is that a clean energy and emissions bill needs to be passed this session, especially considering the state of the state’s distributed solar industry.
Last December, the final incentives from the state’s 2017 Future Energy Jobs Act were awarded, marking the end of a development boom that had put the state on track to meet its 2008 RPS goal of requiring utilities to source 25% of their electricity from renewables by 2025.
Companies and organizations that had previously thrown their support behind the Clean Energy Jobs Act or the Path to 100 now back Pritzker’s bill. They recognize that if no energy legislation passes the current session, then the state’s solar industry will suffer what many fear will be a significant and irreparable decline.”