As Illinois lawmakers finished their work for 2025, they began backing away from their four-year-old pledge that the state would produce electricity only from carbon-free sources by 2045.

They did so by conferring new powers on state regulators who had already signaled that closing coal- and gas-fired electricity plants as scheduled, starting in 2030, is likely impossible in the face of looming shortages and soaring monthly bills.

In a complex mosaic, they also empowered these same regulators to inject significant new horsepower into renewable and battery storage power.

Under the state’s new energy legislation, the Illinois Commerce Commission can not only delay the planned closures of fossil fuel sources, but also raise electricity rates to build both renewable and fossil fuel sources that the legislature hasn’t even considered. 

These expanded powers are controversial because the ICC hasn’t had them since Illinois deregulated its electrical generation market in 1997. At the last minute, lawmakers inserted a provision that allows them to suspend ICC rate hikes and then negotiate with the agency about modifying them.

To get all this done, lawmakers had to embrace a new sense of urgency as Illinois confronts its carbon-rich, resource-constrained, and ever-more-costly energy future. 

“There’s a criticality in Springfield now around getting new generating capacity,” said Mark Pruitt, former head of the Illinois Power Agency, a state regulator.

“It’s no longer just nice to have renewable energy and energy storage,” Pruitt said. “To maintain economic viability, we need every available capacity resource. One aspect of this may be to better understand the role of the natural gas plants.”

The ICC and other agencies are likely to amplify this urgency in a resource adequacy report they’re finalizing. The agencies are scheduled to issue a draft report sometime in November, with a final version coming next month.

According to an ICC consultant who previewed the report in a recent webinar, the generation and import capacities of the Commonwealth Edison service area of northern Illinois are likely to fall 15% short of demand by 2030. The downstate Ameren area could fall 20% short.

The ICC consultant, Nate Miller, said delays in the scheduled closing of generating plants that serve the regional electric grids that power Illinois are now likely.

Miller works for Energy+Environmental Economics, a Littleton, Colorado-based consultancy, and he spoke during a webinar last month that included these highlights:

Peak electricity demand is likely to rise 20% to 30% by 2035 in ComEd’s service area, and by 11% to 17% in Ameren’s area, mostly because of new data centers. This follows decades of relatively flat demand growth.
ComEd’s service area, which enjoys a surplus now because of its 10 nuclear reactors, will likely need 3 additional gigawatts of generating capacity by 2030 to keep up with demand. The Ameren area will need an additional 2.5 gigawatts.    
Illinois could face higher electricity bills not just because of its own shortfalls but also because of shortages in other states.

In just five years, these shortages could total 28 gigawatts of electricity in the PJM Interconnection grid that serves 13 states from northern Illinois to New Jersey plus the District of Columbia, Miller said. That’s roughly equal to 28 nuclear reactors.

By 2030, the Midwest Independent System Operator grid, which serves downstate Illinois and 14 other states from Mississippi to North Dakota as well as Manitoba, could require 18 gigawatts of additional power, he said.

In their resource adequacy report, the ICC and other agencies will include a menu of potential remedies. But they’ll also encounter limits.

The shortages can’t be solved by imports into Illinois, since surrounding states are also wrestling with higher data center demand and yawning capacity shortages.

And they can’t be solved in the short run by new capacity, since nuclear plants take decades to build, and wind and solar remain too intermittent, at least in the eyes of PJM and MISO officials who analyze their impact on the grids.

That’s one reason the new Illinois energy bill orders the ICC to study whether the state should withdraw from PJM and MISO and establish its own grid, similar to Texas and California.

Scott Vogt, vice president of strategy and energy policy for ComEd, stated in an interview that because PJM and MISO have been slow to hook up new renewable generating capacity, he expects Illinois to add almost no utility-scale battery storage to the grid by 2030, despite the new incentives from Springfield. But he expects battery storage in homes and commercial buildings to boom.

In the meantime, Vogt said, the main uncertainty hanging over Illinois’ energy policy is the pace at which the infrastructure for artificial intelligence will actually grow.

“That’s the bet or the risk,’’ Vogt said. “Will the data centers arrive before enough new renewable and storage assets are added to the grid to replace the capacity and generation provided by the gas plants?’’

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One thing is for sure. 

The looming shortages that Miller highlighted in his webinar will only inflame monthly bills that are soaring. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a quarter of American households couldn’t pay their energy bills in full last year.

In May, Ameren predicted its residential customers would spend approximately $45 more than their average monthly electricity bill of $151 during the summer. The actual increases were much higher, partly because downstate Illinois experienced 10 consecutive days of triple-digit temperatures in June, the company said.

Future price increases could be even worse as shortages loom not just in Illinois but in the surrounding states from which central and southern Illinois have been importing increasing amounts of power in recent years.

“Electricity supply rates in Illinois will be at the whim of the import market and that’s just not a place we want to be, especially in a region that historically has had a low cost of living as one of its greatest advantages,” said Matthew Tomc, vice president of regulatory policy and energy supply for Ameren Illinois.

“A lot of our industry is energy-intensive,” he said. “You think ADM in Decatur and Caterpillar in Peoria. So that’s the concern. In the next five years, how do we shore this up?”

The 1,020-page energy bill, passed Oct. 30 as the legislature grappled with other pressing issues, such as underfunded pensions and transit systems, will subsidize the construction of 3 gigawatts of battery storage in Illinois by 2030.

The batteries will work in tandem with wind and solar to make the electricity they supply less intermittent.

In addition, the bill funds pilot programs for geothermal energy networks, repeals the existing moratorium on new large-scale nuclear construction, and increases subsidies to retrofit homes to use less energy.

The bill also requires the ICC to present legislators with the initial fruits of its newfound powers, that is, a draft of its first Integrated Resource Plan, in about a year. It will be Springfield’s blueprint for stabilizing prices and preventing blackouts, and it will trigger months of hearings and rule-making debates.

As the ICC implements the plan, it may sign long-term contracts and allow higher utility bills to build new sources of electrical generation within Illinois.

During legislative testimony before the vote, ICC Executive Director Jonathan Feipel said the Integrated Resource Plan directs the agency to procure the most cost-effective, reliable and environmentally friendly electricity possible for Illinois.

“If we find that we need those gas plants to keep the lights on for resource adequacy in an affordable way, the plan gives the commission the ability to do that,” Feipel said.

The ICC will begin implementing the plan before Illinois is scheduled to start closing its fossil fuel plants in 2030, Feipel said. “So it’s like a ‘staging in’ of the ability to address the current crisis, right?” he said.

Keeping fossil fuel plants open beyond schedule would be a bitter pill for Gov. JB Pritzker and his Democratic allies to swallow, especially during statewide elections in 2026. 

That’s true in part because the first plants scheduled to close, starting in 2030, are the dirtiest or those located in Black and brown neighborhoods where pollution is already a health threat.

In an interview before the close of the legislative session, Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, blamed the need to reconsider fossil fuel closings on the unexpected boom in power-hungry data centers.

“I think it could end up being difficult for those plants to close starting in 2030 as scheduled,” he said.

If Cunningham is right, Pritzker could wind up facing reelection next year with one of his signature environmental achievements — the commitment to carbon-free electricity — in danger of being delayed.

When asked about this prospect Oct. 30, before the end of the legislative session, he described the question as premature. 

At that moment, Pritzker said, he and the legislature were focused on passing an energy bill aimed at lowering monthly bills. 

In the end, the state’s new energy legislation did add battery storage and energy efficiency. The governor and others say these measures will pay for themselves and save ratepayers money by reducing demand and, thereby, easing upward pressure on prices.

Marc Poulos, a Springfield labor quarterback, said Pritzker won’t pay a big political price if the natural gas plants stay open longer than planned. That’s especially true, he said, if the formal order to delay the closings comes from PJM and MISO, which are federally regulated grid operators.

“Pritzker then gets to write the press release,” Poulos said. “Oh, this is bull––––. We’ve been writing letters to PJM and MISO for years. If only the other states had followed Illinois early on,’” said Poulos, executive director of labor-management operations for International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150.

“It’s a great narrative. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think they’re wrong,’’ Poulos said, referring to Pritzker and his aides.

Poulos also praised the bill’s beefed-up labor protections on state-subsidized energy contracts.

Power lines run northeast off of 75th Street in Hodgkins are part of the ComEd power distribution system that connects the nuclear plants in Will County to the city. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)

The bill’s most controversial provisions were its new powers for the ICC to sign long-term contracts for new generating capacity and increase electricity rates to cover the costs.

For instance, during debates before the bill’s passage, lawmakers asked Brian Granahan, acting director of the Illinois Power Agency, if regulators could decide to build 6 gigawatts of battery storage, even though the legislature had opted to subsidize 3 for now. His answer was “that’s absolutely right.”

Granahan continued, “I would argue you want us to be able to do that. 

“If we make a finding that in 2030 we’ll have rolling blackouts throughout July and August because we no longer have sufficient supply, what you want us to be able to do … is to say, `here’s the solution to make sure the lights stay on,’” Granahan said.

This answer and others like it prompted Democratic supermajorities in the House and Senate to give legislators the power to amend ICC rate hikes. 

Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, still complained the legislature had surrendered too much.

“We’re giving away all of our authority to sit and have a discussion and a debate with the ICC,” Rezin said during an all-night legislative talkathon. 

“Five unelected officials who, by the way, come from special interests in the wind and solar area,” Rezin said, referring to Pritzker-appointed ICC commissioners. “I mean, let’s be honest here. Who are these people?” Rezin asked.

The energy bill passed without a single Republican vote.

Jen Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council, said her group supported expanded powers for the ICC even though the agency could opt to build even more natural gas plants. “We’re taking a risk,” she said.

Walling said the risk is tolerable because she believes natural gas plants are too expensive to play a significant role in the state’s energy future. 

She also said the energy bill, coupled with a transit system overhaul the legislature passed hours later, contained too many environmental benefits to pass up.

These included the lifting of wind and solar spending caps, potentially allowing the ICC to subsidize 10 gigawatts of additional renewable generating capacity, she said.

For environmentalists, Walling said, the next big legislative push will be to limit the power and water usage of data centers and the added costs they place on other ratepayers. Statewide elections in 2026 make it unlikely but not impossible, Walling said, that legislators will make progress on these thorny issues next year.

The next major legislative debate on Illinois energy, she said, may not occur until January 2027.

John Lippert is a freelancer.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/09/illinois-energy-bill-pritzker-electricity/