The following commentary was written by Marcelina Pedraza and Gina Ramirez. Pedraza is a member of IBEW and United Auto Workers Local 551 at Ford Chicago Assembly Plant, has been a union electrician for 24 years, and is board president of the Southeast Environmental Task Force. Ramirez is a Midwest outreach manager at NRDC, working to further sustainable land use and zoning rules that can provide crucial protections to areas of Chicago, like the Southeast Side, that are burdened with cumulative industrial pollution. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

Illinois is at the forefront of an emerging electric vehicle (EV) industry, yet the workers building this new economic engine are under constant threat of being left behind. 

Our community has been hit hard by the decline of the steel industry. Our neighbors who worked and still live here were left with a toxic legacy after the industry practically disappeared. After the steel mills that once employed thousands of people closed down, the pollution that was left behind has led to higher rates of asthma, cancer, and other respiratory diseases.

We now have an opportunity to do it the right way by making a just transition into a clean economy. We can take care of our environment and create good quality union jobs in EV manufacturing right here on the Southeast Side of Chicago where we live and work.   

There are a number of things that can be done to ensure a just transition to a clean economy for autoworkers. 

Above all, we need to make sure the state and federal government invest in training programs for workers who are transitioning to new jobs in the clean energy sector. These programs should be designed to ensure workers have the skills they need to succeed in these new jobs. 

We also need our elected officials to support transitioning our existing automotive manufacturing facilities into building electric vehicles and their parts. Federal funds are available to do this, and Illinois is already a major hub for automotive production. With the right funding and support, Illinois can be a major hub for EV production too. 

However, some companies are trying to use the transition to EVs to undermine the power of unions and drive down wages and benefits. 

For too long, corporations have pitted workers against environmental activists, claiming that we can’t have both good jobs and a clean environment. It’s time to put an end to this narrative. We can create good-paying union jobs in the clean energy sector, while also protecting our health and safety.

We must push corporations to clean up their pollution and invest in clean energy jobs and make sure that these jobs are good-paying union jobs that provide benefits and security for workers and their families.

We must also make sure that the transition is fair. Creating policies that encourage new EV manufacturing plants to unionize will give workers a seat at the table to bargain for fair wages and benefits. We need to make sure that the government creates a level playing field for unions so that they are not discriminated against by employers.

The fight for a just transition at the “Big Three” (Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis) is a fight for our entire community because the benefits reach much more than an individual worker at an individual plant. It’s also a fight for our health, our safety, and our future. We must unite and stand together to win this fight.

We should also boost investment in electric public transit, EV charging stations, and all green infrastructure that makes EVs more practical and convenient. This will drive demand and support new jobs. 

Additionally, offering tax credits and incentives for the companies and consumers will encourage more EV manufacturing here in the U.S.

The shift to EVs presents an opportunity to lift up workers and build a fairer economy by giving us a voice through union representation while also growing the clean energy sector. The Southeast Side of Chicago is a microcosm of the challenges and opportunities facing this country as we transition to a clean economy.  As a union worker and environmental activist, we know that we must unite to fight for a just transition to a clean energy economy because we are fighting for the future of our planet and our communities. It is a fight for good-paying union jobs that can support families and a fight for environmental justice and for a cleaner and healthier future for all.

Commentary: A just transition to clean transportation mustn’t leave autoworkers behind is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials were met with photos and tearful stories of deceased loved ones at a national hearing in Chicago on Wednesday regarding the agency’s proposed new rules regulating coal ash. 

The proposed rules, released in May, would subject hundreds more coal ash dumps to federal regulations adopted in 2015. But scores of coal ash dumps would remain unregulated, leading residents and advocates to plead with the EPA to further expand the proposed rules and step up enforcement of existing rules. 

The environmental injustice of coal ash was clear at the hearing, as residents testified from Native American communities in New Mexico and Nevada, Latino communities in Midwestern cities, and Black communities in Alabama and Tennessee, among others. Multiple people told the EPA officials about their friends and family who had died or suffered from cancer or other illnesses they attribute to coal ash. 

The proposed rules would, for the first time, regulate coal ash ponds that were inactive as of 2015. But the rules would still exempt categories of dumps that speakers at the hearing called “arbitrary,” including repositories not in contact with water as of 2015, coal ash dumps at plants closed before 2015 that don’t have a currently regulated pond at the same site, and scattered coal ash used as structural fill. 

“Anecdotally we know such sites include playgrounds, schools, roads and other uses that humans regularly come into contact with,” Earthjustice deputy managing attorney Gavin Kearney said of sites where coal ash fill was used. 

He noted that there is no comprehensive data regarding coal ash ponds supposedly not in contact with liquid, but experts are sure companies will invoke that exception. Earthjustice and its partners, meanwhile, have identified more than 100 dumps on at least 48 sites that would meet the exception for closed ponds at active power plants without another regulated coal ash impoundment.   

“Creating these distinctions undermines confidence in the rule and also gives industry cover, in good faith or bad faith, that they are trying to implement the rule but aren’t sure how it applies to their sites,” Kearney told the EPA representatives. 

Frank Holleman, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, likewise warned that it “undercuts the credibility of EPA and our government to have to say, ‘See, that over there is not protected because of some highly technical reason that’s not connected to common sense.’” 

Attorney Faith Bugel testified that regulating all coal ash on a site without exceptions is critical to avoid companies saying that contamination is from an “alternate source,” including coal ash not covered by the regulations, and hence avoiding responsibility for cleaning it up. “So often [alternative source arguments] have been used as an escape valve from the 2015 rules,” Bugel said. 

Drinking water fears

Unregulated coal ash is of particular concern to people who get their water from private wells, as numerous people noted at the hearing. 

Environmental groups’ analysis of company data reported under the 2015 rules shows that groundwater is being contaminated at 91% of those coal plant sites. No testing is required around ash not covered by the regulations. But experts say it is even more likely to be contaminating groundwater, since it was dumped when standards around liners and other protections were even lower. 

Private water wells are only tested if the owner pays for the testing, which is inaccessible for many. Paul Kysel told the EPA about testing his own well water for contaminants associated with farming and getting clean results. He said he didn’t realize that a partially unlined coal ash pond less than a mile from his home in Pines Township, Indiana, could be contaminating his water with chemicals not detected in that test. 

Nearby Town of Pines, Indiana, became a Superfund site due to tons of coal ash from NIPSCO’s Michigan City plant that was used as fill throughout the town. Kysel had moved to the bucolic area from Michigan City, where he was sick of “coal dust, nasty odors, [coal dust] deposits on our vehicles and homes.” 

“We thought we were safe,” after moving to Pines Township, Kysel said. “We weren’t safe.” 

He and other locals are upset that the proposed new rules would still not cover coal ash mixed with dune sand to build up land on the lakefront coal plant’s site. A lawsuit filed by environmental groups in Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee alleges that Lake Michigan is at serious risk of coal ash contamination if erosion and increasing storms cause the land to collapse, as happened near We Energies’ Oak Creek coal plant in Wisconsin in 2011. Lake Michigan provides drinking water for millions of people in Chicago, Northwest Indiana and Southeast Wisconsin, where multiple coal plants line the shores.

The settlement of that lawsuit spurred the EPA to release the proposed new rules, though the rules don’t address ash used as fill at sites like the Michigan City plant. 

“This coal ash is ultimately going to rupture into the lake and cause another catastrophe,” Ashley Williams, executive director of Just Transition Northwest Indiana, said at a rally during the hearing. The owner of a Northwest Indiana microbrewery that relies on Lake Michigan water was among other locals who testified at the hearing. 

Earthjustice senior counsel Lisa Evans noted that the new proposed rules would not have covered the ash in Town of Pines nor the ash that spilled into Lake Michigan at Oak Creek. 

“The EPA should have prevented this damage decades ago,” Evans testified. “It is irrational and illegal to regulate some leaking dumps and not others.” 

Ash was used to build up land and was scattered across plant sites in decades past without record-keeping or regulation. This practice essentially continues in the form of beneficial reuse, where coal ash is legally used as “unencapsulated” structural fill. Advocates have also called for stricter regulation of such reuse, including in Wisconsin, where a vast majority of coal ash is reused and groundwater contamination has been shown as a result. 

Chicago has no coal ash ponds or landfills covered by the existing or new proposed rules. But residents worry that as in Michigan City, coal ash was scattered and dumped across the sites of two coal plants that closed in 2012.

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization Executive Director Kim Wasserman noted that the Chicago neighborhood is densely populated by working-class and Latino residents. She echoed demands that new EPA rules require companies to test for historic coal ash scattered around their sites and clean up any they find. 

There is not “sufficient information about the risk the site still poses to surrounding communities,” Wasserman said. She added that the community does not trust the current site owner given its botched implosion of the coal plant in 2020, sending a toxic dust cloud across the community in an “environmental catastrophe,” as Little Village resident Edith Tovar called it at the hearing.

A moving problem

Enforcement and expansion of the federal rules will ultimately mean many millions of tons of coal ash will be removed and transported to safer locations. Such transport has already caused environmental injustices, even as it mitigates other risks.

Carlos Torrealba, an organizer with the Climate Justice Alliance in Florida, lamented how coal ash from Puerto Rico is being disposed of in Florida, including in a private landfill in a community home to a large and growing Puerto Rican population. The Energy News Network documented how the ash from Puerto Rico poses risks to multiple communities on its route in the Southeast.

“It’s really mind-boggling because that coal ash site was put next to the homes of Puerto Ricans who had been displaced from Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria,” Torrealba said. “And now they have the double impact of being displaced, seeking refuge and having coal ash dumped next to you.” 

Cerissa A. Brown of the People’s Justice Council in Birmingham, Alabama, decried how coal ash from the infamous 2008 Kingston, Tennessee, spill was delivered to a landfill in the largely Black community of Uniontown, Alabama. The Energy News Network reported last year that Uniontown residents have been unable to get answers from the private landfill company about its coal ash management procedures and whether it still accepts coal ash.

“Exposure to environmental pollution such as coal ash in Uniontown has resulted in residents suffering physical harm and an escalating mental health crisis,” Brown said. “This reveals systemic racism rooted in our communities.”

Handling and moving coal ash can pose serious risks to workers if adequate protections aren’t in place. 

Betty Johnson’s husband, Tommy, was among the first responders cleaning up the 2008 Kingston spill. She broke down into tears testifying about how he and other workers labored without adequate protective gear. She blames his death last month on his exposure to coal ash. Johnson is among workers who have filed lawsuits against the contractor responsible for the cleanup, citing multiple deaths and serious illnesses. Advocates argue that disasters similar to Kingston could happen if regulations do not require the full cleanup of all coal ash dumps.

“My husband and I had plans when I retired to travel; now he’s in the graveyard,” Johnson said. “And I’m here fighting for my husband and all the workers, everyone who has been hurt by you, because you are not doing your job.”

Julie Bledsoe’s husband also worked on the Kingston cleanup, and would come home blowing coal ash out of his nose, coughing up coal ash, and cleaning coal ash out of his ears with Q-tips. 

“Her husband is a hero,” she said of Tommy Johnson. “My husband is a hero. But they were treated like they were trash.”

Enforcement crucial 

While the existing federal rules took effect in 2015, the EPA did very little to enforce them until last year, when it issued a number of findings and decisions. Among these, the EPA denied some companies’ requests for extensions to an April 2021 deadline for unlined ponds covered by the rules to stop accepting waste. 

The evening before the Chicago hearing, Waukegan residents testified on the EPA’s proposal to deny a request to extend that deadline from plant owner Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of NRG.

While residents support the proposed denial of the extension, they are frustrated that the company has already been allowed to dump for more than two years beyond the deadline. The coal plant closed last summer, but a diesel peaker plant still operates on the site, and residents are concerned that waste from that plant is going into the unlined pond. 

NRG spokesperson Dave Schrader said in a statement: “Midwest Generation remains committed to operating its Waukegan facility safely and in compliance with federal and State of Illinois CCR [coal combustion residual] rules and regulations. Midwest Generation disagrees with the U.S. EPA’s recent proposed determination. The mitigation efforts Midwest Generation has implemented at its Waukegan facility were certified compliant by outside experts and are approved methods of monitoring and protecting groundwater. Midwest Generation has ceased burning coal to generate electricity at Waukegan but continues to manage stormwater. Further, Midwest Generation ceased placing CCR in the East Pond when it ceased burning coal. The pond is only used for stormwater and process water unrelated to CCR.”

Waukegan residents testifying at the Chicago hearing noted that they have been demanding a “just transition” including coal ash removal for a decade, with little response from EPA or NRG.

“Publicly available tests conducted independently confirm there is no risk to human health or the environment from the ash ponds or historic ash area,” Schrader said. “Removing the coal ash, however, would pose unnecessary safety and environmental risks to the community, create significant traffic disruptions, and could take far longer than closing in place.”

Advocates say the EPA needs to not only expand the rules to cover all coal ash dumps, but aggressively enforce its rules.

“Rules are awesome, but without enforcement, companies will keep doing what they’ve been doing,” Waukegan resident Eddie Flores, co-chair of Clean Power Lake County, told the Energy News Network. “If the EPA doesn’t act, companies will just ignore what the EPA says.”

At rules hearing, U.S. EPA hears human toll of unaddressed coal ash pollution is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Southern Illinois can be a mental health care desert, with residents forced to drive hours to seek care for mental health and substance abuse issues. 

But that is changing thanks in part to state funding for a “just transition” from fossil fuels in places where coal plants and coal mines have closed.

The first round of funding under the state’s Energy Transition Community Grant program is helping communities add mental health care services, expand workforce training opportunities, and restore local budgets battered by the decline of fossil fuels. The grants were created by Illinois’s 2021 Climate & Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA).

Coal has deep roots around Randolph County, and like most Illinois coalfield communities it has suffered as coal mining jobs diminished and became non-union, and coal plants closed. Peabody’s local Gateway Mine closed (though its Gateway North is still operating), and Vistra Energy’s Baldwin coal plant has slashed generation and will close entirely by 2025.

“I come from a long family of coal miners — a grandfather who was a mule skinner and a coal miner, my brothers were both coal miners,” said county commissioner Marc Kiehna. “I’m the youngest of three boys, by the time I was out there on the market for jobs, coal mining was kind of on the decline.”

Randolph County is slated to receive $1.6 million that, along with federal Covid relief dollars, will allow it to transform a wing of an underutilized nursing home into a behavioral health center with 16 in-patient beds and space for group therapy and other programming.

“This will really provide some care for an underserved population,” said Kiehna. “We struggle here in the rural area with meth, fentanyl, opioid abuse, all that goes along with that. This gives us an opportunity to try to make families healthier and have a positive impact.”

All Illinois fossil fuel plants must close by 2045, unless they can capture and sequester emissions, under CEJA. And most coal plants will close much sooner, thanks to market forces. Since 2007, 23 coal plants have partially or entirely shut down in Illinois, according to Energy Information Administration data.

CEJA allocates $40 million per year through 2045 to provide grants to communities within 30 miles of coal plants or mines that have closed within the past six years, or are slated to close within six years. (A separate provision addresses nuclear plants.)

State officials recently released a list of more than 50 agencies that will receive the grants, provided they complete a phase two application detailing their spending plans and required stakeholder engagement efforts.

Agencies were urged to apply late last year for the inaugural round of funding, in a process some described as rushed to make sure that communities with already-closed plants and mines could benefit for the maximum number of years. The $40 million was divided among the applicants, with amounts based on estimated impact of coal closures.

“The 2023 grants were a pleasant surprise for many of the eligible entities,” said Prairie Rivers Network energy campaign coordinator Amanda Pankau. “I worked with several school districts who applied thinking they may get the minimum $50,000, and they all ended up with more than $500,000. While it was a welcome surprise, we do want communities to have more time to plan and involve community stakeholders in the future.”

The first round of grants went to school districts, park districts, and city and county governments in many of the state’s best-known coal mining communities: Harrisburg, Carbondale, Marion, Mount Olive, Galatia, Hillsboro. John A. Logan Community College in the heart of coal country got a grant, as did the Lake of Egypt Fire Protection District.

A $1 million grant went to Waukegan, the northern Illinois city where an NRG coal plant closed last summer, and where residents have long demanded a voice and funding for just transition plans.

Learning in Harrisburg

In decades past in Southern Illinois, Harrisburg Unit 3 schools superintendent Amy Dixon remembers, students “could go off in the mines making more money than we do, and take care of their family.”

But many coal mines closed or reduced their workforces, and now “we need to equip our students with skills they can utilize here in our community,” said Dixon. 

Often that means jobs requiring Career Technical Education (CTE) — in carpentry, contracting and electrical work, including in the burgeoning solar economy. The Mid-America Carpenters Regional Council recently featured Harrisburg High on its Built to Last TV show, and students have gotten work with the trade union.  

“We have more students wanting to take CTE classes, and we also have a workforce that’s needing more electricians and plumbers and carpenters,” said Dixon. “We would love to give more students that skill set. But we have one building where we are trying to teach our welding and automotive and electricity and building trades all together. It is maxed out, we’re needing some more physical space so we can expand our CTE offerings.”

“This grant will be invaluable in helping us expand opportunities for our students”

Amy Dixon, school superintendent

Now the school district can build a new pole-barn-style CTE training center, thanks to a $539,000 Energy Transition Community Grant. The district qualified based on three nearby coal mines that closed between 2017 and 2019: Galatia, Wildcat Hills and New Future. More than 50 people came to community meetings to talk about the plans. 

“This grant will be invaluable in helping us expand opportunities for our students,” said Dixon. “We wouldn’t have the money to do it otherwise. The community partners, the parents, businesses, education partners, students, staff — it’s just an outstanding example of how Harrisburg comes together to support our schools and each other.”

Pankau noted that while coal plants must inform grid operators in advance of plans to close, mines have no such mandate. Mines often ramp staffing down based on coal demand, and rely on contractors, meaning even the federal WARN Act about impending mass layoffs might not apply. 

“Unfortunately, we do not have information or advanced planning when it comes to the future of Illinois’ coal mines,” said Pankau. “We would like to see [the Illinois Department of Natural Resources] work with communities and industry to help plan for upcoming coal mine closures, so that those communities may apply for grants and begin to plan for the anticipated impacts of closure.”

Hope in Havana

Havana, a town on the Illinois River in central Illinois, saw its tax base decimated when the local coal plant closed in 2019, soon after energy company Vistra acquired Dynegy’s Illinois fleet. Grace Mott had just started her job as director of parks and recreation at the time, and within a month her workforce plummeted from 15 to three employees.

“My budget was cut by a full third when [the plant] stopped paying their taxes,” Mott said. “I had to cut everyone except maintenance — the recreation director, all my office staff, because we have 13 parks and nine buildings to take care of. Honestly I didn’t know if we would survive this. I spent the first year cutting costs every single place I could find.”

Mott made it her mission to keep the town’s popular parks running despite the funding drought, and she cobbled together grants for projects like renovating the historic pool and century-old gymnasium. 

“I was so new to the job, and so stubborn, I’ve just been working hard to make it happen,” she said. 

But finding grants for operations — including staff — is extremely difficult, and she found herself having to forego opportunities for new investments since she wouldn’t have the people to run them. That’s changing thanks to a $157,000 Energy Transition Community grant, which will be used to hire more staff.

“If not for the energy transition community grant, I’m still not sure we’d be sustainable in the long run,” Mott said.

The new investment in staff and operations will dovetail with infrastructure projects funded by a separate state grant — putting a roof on the riverside open-air stage that hosts a popular bluegrass festival, installing fitness equipment and launching e-bike rentals in the park, and building three teepees for scouting camps and visitors. Together, the investments will help build Havana’s burgeoning reputation as a tourist destination. The community energy grant can also pay for marketing to visitors.

“I wanted to go somewhere I could make a difference,” said Mott, who moved with her husband from DeKalb, Illinois, where she had started a successful online newspaper. “We’re certainly doing that here in this town — it’s been just wonderful.

Havana’s local school district, meanwhile, is getting a $757,000 energy transition grant, and the city of Havana was awarded $55,000. Schools superintendent Matt Plater said the schools’ grant replaces a similar amount that the district has lost through the coal plant’s taxes, although federal Covid relief funds — which the park district did not receive — helped tide the schools over. 

The energy transition funds will go towards a plan that Plater already had underway to replace the elaborate shingle roof on the town’s middle school, along with roofs on a transportation building and the ballfield restrooms and concession stand.

While just transition efforts often focus on job training for displaced fossil fuel workers, Plater noted that not many locals were actually employed in the coal plant. The tax base and opportunities for the younger generation are the bigger issues for the town, where almost two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

“Ideally, sure, they’re thinking you could do job training, help employ displaced workers” with just transition funds, Plater said. “But these plants didn’t hire that many people. We didn’t feel a lot of that job impact in our community, it was the tax base, the assessed valuation that impacted us the most.” 

The energy transition grant will allow the district to pay for the roofing overhaul without taking out bonds, as a district would normally do.

“We’re not putting money in anyone’s pockets or giving a job to someone who lost one, but this allows us to do a project without bonds and keep our property taxes low as a result,” Plater said. “We’re not paying interest on a bond 15 years out. It’s a win-win-win for the community.”

Back in Randolph County

When the Baldwin plant was operating at full force, Randolph County received about $2 million a year in taxes from it, Kiehna said. Now they get about $300,000, and that amount will continue declining.

“It affected us in a lot of ways,” Kiehna said. “We probably lost 100 good-paying jobs, and with the tax issues, we’re trying to make sure we have funds to provide public safety, the sheriff, all the things we do. It’s been a struggle. We laid off staff, we’ve cut here and there to make sure we balance our budget.”

County leaders decided the behavioral health center was a priority, and the nursing home where only about one-third of beds were occupied seemed the ideal place to create it. The effort is also funded with federal Covid relief dollars.

“We said to ourselves, ‘What can we do to provide for a long-lasting benefit?’” Kiehna said. “If we can make our families healthier, guess what, our kids will do better in school and have better lives.”

Kiehna is hoping that efforts to develop a four-lane highway connecting St. Louis and Southern Illinois towns and the Shawnee National Forest could also boost tourism and economic opportunity in the region.

“I’d like to have some jobs here for my grandkids, let people live a good life down here. It’s a beautiful area.”

Mental health, roofing and job training: Illinois ‘just transition’ grants roll out is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Michigan in Zion, Illinois, opened a few years before Al Hill moved to the verdant, friendly town in 1976 to operate the local ice rink. The plant was an economic boon for the town, and Hill and others assumed that once it closed, the nuclear waste would be taken away and the site redeveloped.

But the plant stopped operating in 1997, after an employee accidentally shut the reactor down and then-owner ComEd deemed running the trouble-plagued plant too costly.

It became a drag on the town; the jobs and the $19 million in annual taxes it once provided nearly disappeared even as the nuclear waste remained. Hill became mayor in 2015, grappling with the burden of the plant and fighting for government aid that eventually materialized in Illinois’ 2021 energy law.

Now as state and federal lawmakers are re-upping commitments to nuclear power, Hill and others point to Zion as a cautionary tale and urge planning for a just transition once nuclear plants close.

Much attention has been paid to a just transition from coal, in Illinois and nationally. But nuclear plants typically pay far more in taxes and employ many more people at higher wages than coal plants. Plus, nuclear waste typically stored onsite is an even bigger liability than contamination left over from coal plants.

So even as recent federal legislation has created clean energy credits for nuclear power and states — including Illinois — have offered new subsidies to nuclear plants, plans should be made and mandates enshrined regarding the plants’ eventual closing, civic leaders say.

“It’s not Exelon that needs the bailouts — it’s the communities that will get screwed,” said Dave Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago, referring to the owner of Illinois’ nuclear fleet. “There’s an emphasis on keeping the plants open at all costs, save the high-paying jobs. We get that, but nothing lasts forever. The best time to plan for retirement is before you retire. We made our position known because of what we saw happen when Zion closed.”

A downward spiral 

After the Zion plant closed, the town of 25,000 people lost more than half of its tax base, forcing increases in taxes levied for the schools and cutbacks in park and library budgets.

“That $19 million burden shifted to all the businesses and residents — their taxes went up 50% right off the bat, and what happened then is a property tax spiral got kicked off,” said David Knabel, director of Zion’s accounts and finance departments. “If your property taxes go up, you have less to spend on a house. With taxes being so high, our property values started crashing because nobody wanted to buy a house. It got to the point where nice two-bedroom homes were going for $20,000 or $30,000. We had investor groups coming from all over the country buying 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 homes at that price and putting rental in there and not really caring about the maintenance, just getting a monthly check. That created a huge downward spiral for our community.”

Many of the nuclear plant employees were offered jobs at other nuclear plants in the state; their families leaving Zion only added to the housing crash. Rental properties soared, to almost two-thirds of the town’s total. That also meant an influx of residents holding subsidized housing vouchers, a vulnerable population that the town was not prepared to serve, said Hill, who left office after one term.

“It put more stress on the schools, more pressure on police and fire departments,” even as the town’s tax base was declining, said Hill, who had led the park district and then served on the city council before becoming mayor. “I can’t tell you how many businesses said, ‘We’d like to come here but the tax rate is too high’ — big businesses. The taxing bodies sat down and said, ‘What can we do to lower taxes, and keep them low’ — we were talking about buying paper together, things like that, that added up to nothing.”

Saddled with nuclear waste 

When Hill was elected mayor, waste from Zion and the rest of the country’s nuclear plants was to be stored permanently in the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The contractor handling Zion’s decommissioning, EnergySolutions, said the lakefront would be ready for redevelopment by 2020. But state and tribal opposition scuttled the Yucca Mountain plan, and proposals for centralized interim storage sites have also stalled because of concerns about transportation and safety.

Hence about 2.2 million pounds of nuclear waste is still stored on the lakeshore in Zion, with no changes in the foreseeable future.

That means the 200 acres of prime lakefront property cannot be redeveloped. Without the nuclear waste and plant remnants, commercial and residential development on the site could bring tax revenue and jobs, and make Zion a more attractive community for businesses.

“There are places where big auto plants close like Detroit, but they have the chance to redevelop the site,” Knabel said. “When the [nuclear] plant closed, it was tied up in decommissioning for 20 years, and now the site still has all the nuclear spent fuel in casks, and the giant switchyard that’s part of the infrastructure. So we don’t have the opportunity to redevelop to offset the impact” of the closure.

Starting a decade ago, Zion civic leaders lobbied Illinois Congressional members and state legislators for compensation and aid around the plant. Their efforts eventually bore fruit last fall, as the state’s Climate and Equitable Jobs Act mandates tax payments of $15 per kilogram of nuclear waste stored onsite, amounting to about $15 million a year for Zion. The federal STRANDED Act, first proposed by Illinois’ Congressional delegation in 2015 and introduced last year by Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, proposes the same payment rate. If a federal law passes, that would replace the state funds, though Knabel noted that given the current political situation, federal action any time soon is unlikely.

There are six nuclear plants remaining in Illinois, and two of them — Byron and Dresden — received almost $700 million in subsidies under the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act law, in addition to $235 million in annual subsidies for the Clinton and Quad Cities plants under the state’s 2017 Future Energy Jobs Act. Exelon had threatened that without subsidies, the plants would close.

“This industry gets an unbelievable amount of money thrown at it from an unwitting public,” said Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist at the national watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. “Isn’t a subsidy supposed to get an industry going and let the free market take over? Never with nuclear power. There’s no just transition — the money is going to these companies and then they don’t share it with the communities.”

Even as the subsidies mean the plants will stay open for years to come, Kraft and other advocates think civic leaders and legislators should plan for closure and dealing with waste at the plants and other locations in the nuclear supply chain. That includes a waste storage site in Morris, Illinois, originally designed as a nuclear fuel recycling center, and a Honeywell nuclear fuel processing plant in the town of Metropolis.

Jobs and tax relief 

Just transition proponents have called for companies to set aside funds for cleaning up nuclear sites and compensating communities, so that the burden is not on taxpayers. Zion has served as a symbol for other communities — including in Pennsylvania, California and New York — facing the eventual closure of nuclear reactors.

“Create a pool of money prior to closure that would be escrowed and untouchable, that couldn’t be swept off the state books,” Kraft said.

Key questions include who pays the costs for a nuclear just transition, and whether the same ratepayers who will ultimately be affected by the closure will be the ones also subsidizing the transition.

In June, more than 170 environmental and citizen groups nationwide sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm decrying the possible award of federal Civil Nuclear Credits to the Diablo Canyon plant in northern California to extend its operating life. They argued that the move would torpedo the just transition programs that were already underway in compliance with state law, and force ratepayers to unfairly bear the burden of $200 million in just transition costs already spent plus more than a billion dollars needed to keep the plant running. Under the phase-out agreement, utility PG&E is paying Diablo Canyon workers through 2025 and providing transitional tax revenue.

“Unraveling such a model agreement would not only undermine the goal of building a just and equitable clean energy economy, it would also exacerbate environmental justice impacts,” the letter said.

Few choices

Just transition plans also typically include job training components, with a focus on clean energy, and Illinois’ 2021 law devotes significant funding to job training and small business accelerator funding for coal plant, coal mine and nuclear plant workers and communities.

But in the past, such programs — including ones created by Illinois’s 2017 energy law — have floundered in part because there are few jobs that pay as well or require similar skills to coal plant work. And that is even more relevant for nuclear plant workers who often earn even higher wages and have more specialized skills. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists power plant operators earning a median of $81,000 per year, and nuclear reactor operators earning a median of $104,000. 

After a nuclear plant closes there will be years of decommissioning which can create good jobs. Just transition advocates argue that there should be requirements around local hiring and wages and benefits for these jobs, especially since decommissioning is often carried out by contractors rather than the plant owner. In Zion, a citizen advisory board was created to oversee decommissioning, but critics argued it had little power and the process lacked transparency, including over how funds were spent.

Doug Ower was a member of the decommissioning advisory board for 10 years, and was relatively satisfied with that process. But he’s seen the ongoing impacts of the plant’s closure on Zion, and he worries other towns like Byron will go through similar experiences. He worked with the Sierra Club to lobby for just transition provisions in Illinois law.

“A lot of these nuclear plants are located in very small communities; [when they close] it’s going to be devastating,” Ower said. “Obviously you have to look at the jobs — the workers need training and some form of workforce development. Then the communities as well do need some support. If we’re going to have the spent fuel stored in those communities, they should be compensated.”

Knabel said the federal government ultimately should be aiding communities with closed plants forced to store nuclear waste, since the spent fuel is under the jurisdiction of the federal government. He imagines that if small modular nuclear reactors that are being researched end up commercially viable, it’s possible the nuclear plant site could host one. He doesn’t think the fuel will be removed at any time in the foreseeable future and doesn’t see many other options.

“It’s possible you could have a solar field or something like that, but you’re pretty limited in uses,” Knabel said. “There’s a major scar on our community. We’ll make do and make the best we can with it, but we are scarred.”

‘We are scarred’: Nuclear communities sidelined in just transition debate, even as industry subsidies flow is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Solar panels and energy storage will be paired on the sites of six retired coal plants in downstate Illinois under a provision of last fall’s sweeping state energy law.  

The sites for the installations were recently announced, along with five other former coal plants that will host standalone energy storage projects. Vistra, which owns the solar-plus-storage sites, will receive a premium for renewable energy credits at those locations, while the state will provide grants to the battery-only projects, owned by Vistra and NRG Energy. 

The companies and other proponents hailed the program as a pioneering model, helping to create jobs, bolster the tax base and generate clean energy in communities where coal plants have closed. Vistra spokesperson Meranda Cohn called it “a first-in-the-nation fleet transformation of legacy coal plants into renewable energy centers.”

Vistra has said the projects, slated to break ground next spring, will create 60 to 100 direct, indirect and induced jobs at each plant. Property tax revenue is expected to double at many of the sites, according to the company. The state energy law says construction jobs must pay prevailing wage, companies must negotiate labor agreements, and 25% of contractors must meet diversity criteria. 

“Any community that’s facing a major economic facilities closure — whether it’s a coal plant or manufacturing facility — there’s a property tax loss, an economic loss, the workers aren’t going to lunch, the sales tax isn’t there,” said Katie Stonewater, senior advisor on energy and broadband at the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. “This program is one way to support those communities via helping to replace those property tax revenues. And there are other economic benefits — well-paying construction jobs, workers patronizing local businesses. It helps lessen the broader economic burden” of a plant closing. 

Vistra will put between 20 and 68 megawatts of solar and 6 to 9 MW of storage at six of its coal plant sites throughout downstate Illinois, and it will put 37 MW of standalone storage at three other downstate Illinois plants. NRG will build 72 MW of storage each at its Waukegan plant north of Chicago, where it recently closed coal-fired units, and its Will County plant in the southwest Chicago suburbs.

The state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity described the storage grants as a competitive process, though the law was written to make clear which sites would qualify. Vistra announced its site-specific plans when the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act passed last fall. 

The power companies had reportedly pushed hard for the coal-to-solar provisions in the law, which mandates all fossil fuel generation cease by 2045. Some experts noted that while there’s little drawback to the project, it seems largely symbolic since the amount of solar being constructed — just over 200 MW across six sites — is a drop in the bucket in terms of the thousands of megawatts needed to meet the state’s goal of 100% clean power by 2050. Meanwhile, there might be better places to locate energy storage than the rural, remote sites of several of the coal plants.

‘A fair and justified’ subsidy  

Vistra and NRG will receive $79.2 million and $40.7 million respectively for each of the 72- and 37-MW storage sites over 10 years, a total investment of $280.5 million from the state.

An April procurement by the Illinois Power Agency means Vistra will get renewable energy credits — equivalent to a megawatt-hour of power — that it can sell for $30 each for 20 years, for a total cost of about $14 million a year. That’s more expensive than utility-scale solar that the power agency typically procures. In 2018, renewable energy credits for utility-scale solar were pegged at $4.64 in a competitive bidding process. Currently utility-scale solar is procured in a different way that makes it hard to compare prices, but experts said it is still significantly cheaper than the credits being issued for the coal-to-solar program. 

“These prices are above market; this was a compromise part of the legislation,” said Jack Darin, director of the Sierra Club’s Illinois chapter. “But there was a lot of support for doing something at these facilities. We want to see investments made at communities that were dependent on coal plants.”  

The credit prices offered through the coal-to-solar program aren’t without precedent: In 2019, the power agency set a price of $58.10 per renewable credit for solar developed on brownfields. The state Adjustable Block Program that incentivizes distributed and community solar in 2021 saw credit prices of $37 to $98, depending on the size, type of project and whether contractors met equity criteria. 

J.C. Kibbey, Illinois clean energy advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he sees “a fair and justified role now for the subsidy” in the coal-to-solar program. 

“Hybrid solar-plus-storage projects are relatively new but growing very rapidly,” Kibbey said. “The amount of storage deployed in the U.S. in 2021 was double what it was in 2020. A handful of states have already created incentives for storage, and Illinois can look at those different approaches and learn from them as we figure out how we want to support storage here.” 

The Illinois Power Agency will hold another procurement in the fall for solar and storage on coal sites north of Interstate 80, with NRG’s Powerton plant in the PJM market eligible. That procurement will offer the right to sell renewable energy credits at $30 for 15 years.  

Solar capacity 

Kibbey noted that solar at the Vistra plants in downstate Illinois can bid into grid operator MISO’s capacity markets with a 50% capacity credit — meaning half of their nameplate megawatts. Battery storage has a 95% capacity credit, and while it’s not yet clear how exactly solar plus storage will be credited, they likely will receive significant capacity credit, as the Great Plains Institute explains. 

“The energy and capacity from these projects is really important particularly right now and particularly because solar is paired with storage, since there are issues with resource adequacy in the MISO zone that have driven up prices,” Kibbey said. “Solar projects that are paired with storage will almost certainly receive higher capacity values from MISO.” 

He said that putting solar and storage on coal plant sites is a much cleaner option than replacing coal-fired plants with natural gas-fired peaker plants, as companies often do. 

“As coal plants are coming offline, if we’re serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change, we need to replace them with solar plus storage, energy efficiency, demand response, and other clean resources — not gas plants,” Kibbey said.  

Standalone storage  

When the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act was being debated, some residents were disappointed that companies didn’t plan to put solar on coal plant sites in their communities. NRG spokesperson Dave Schrader said NRG does not plan to add solar at the Waukegan or Will County sites.  

“Many factors need to be considered when choosing solar and/or storage projects at any location,” he said. “They include land availability, access to transmission, cost of construction, and energy prices. Battery storage and renewable power like solar do not need to be co-located for them to work as designed. Geographic diversity actually serves to increase the reliability of these projects — just like not having all of your eggs in one basket.” 

He said the Waukegan and Will County storage sites would be “the first utility-scale energy storage projects owned and operated by NRG.” 

“NRG expects to enter into project labor agreements for the construction of the battery energy storage projects, including efforts to improve diversity at our job sites and creating apprenticeship and training opportunities for current and former coal-fired power plant workers,” Schrader added.  

Cohn noted Vistra operates “the world’s largest battery energy storage facility,” at a natural gas-fueled power plant in California. Once an expansion is complete, it will store up to 750 MW of power. The company also runs Texas’ biggest energy storage site, the 260-megawatt DeCordova Energy Storage Facility next to a natural gas plant.

In Illinois, “the storage-only program ensured every impacted plant site could participate and no community would be left behind,” Cohn said. “These storage resources are needed to help balance the intermittency of renewable generation. Battery energy storage facilities provide grid-wide benefits, whether co-located next to generation or placed at strategic locations, to take and store energy during low-demand, high-production periods and then provide/release the stored electricity to the grid during periods of high demand.”

Storage needs to be built along with solar on coal plant sites to get the right to sell solar renewable energy credits through the coal-to-solar program, though there are no credits specifically for energy storage.

Illinois Power Agency Director Anthony Star said entities such as the platform M-RETS are studying how to better incentivize energy storage, and a model like renewable energy credits could potentially be used in the future — though not necessarily in the coal-to-solar program. 

“Determining the right incentive structure in the long-term for storage remains an open policy issue,” Star said. “Currently RECs are generated by renewable energy projects based on their monthly output. In the future, changes to the structure of REC markets could allow for RECs to be more granular and recognize when the energy is supplied to the grid. In that way, storage projects that deliver energy when it is most needed could be compensated accordingly.” 

Real just transition 

Darin said that while the coal-to-solar projects are important, a real transition to clean energy won’t be made unless the companies fully clean up coal ash that is stored at the sites, largely in unlined pits that have contaminated groundwater, according to monitoring the companies are required to do.  

“We are pleased these sites are headed to productive reuse, but it’s important they be adequately remediated, which in most cases means the coal ash is completely removed,” Darin said. “To be beneficial community assets also has to mean they’re not polluting the water supply.”   

Community members in Waukegan, where NRG will put 72 megawatts of storage, have long demanded a robust just transition plan from the company, and they are angry the company plans to leave coal ash in place at the lakefront site.  

“Waukegan is eager to move forward with green lakefront uses, that should be compatible [with energy storage] if done right,” Darin said. “We really have the potential to turn these sites from fenced-off sources of pollution to real community assets.”

Solar, storage projects set to bring jobs, tax revenue to Illinois coal communities is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.