Exempts the Authority from the jurisdiction of the Illinois CommerceCommission.
Speaker Madigan in HB 4091. If the Governor read…well, things.. he might be offended.
Make no mistake about it, this is a giant fuck you to the power companies:
(3) There is a lack of confidence that the electricity needs of residents, commerce, and industry can be supplied in a reliable, efficient, and economical manner in Illinois because ComEd and AmerenIP, AmerenCIPS, and AmerenCILCO have (i) increased their rates unreasonably and unnecessarily; (ii) repeatedly threatened bankruptcy; (iii) failed to maintain their transmission and distribution systems in a manner that ensures reliability; and (iv) in some cases, failed to restore power to customers for more than a week after an outage.
Essentially the bill would set up a public utility company that would compete with the private investor owned corporations–under a deregulated environment, this is a great idea.
Potential problems in the bill include a strong emphasis on Illinois produced coal. I think a couple of changes to the bill could make environmentalists happy by including a provision that the coal projects undertaken will utilize carbon sequestration and use high quality scrubbers. There’s a double benefit here–the utilities claim such technology is too expensive, but a successful project could demonstrate that the technology isn’t nearly as expensive as they claim and encourage it’s adoption more broadly.
There also needs to be greater emphasis on renewable sources–in fact, a requirement for a second project (after the coal project) should be an alternative energy project in northern Illinois.
While I have some minor qualms about the bill, this is a great idea–I hope the Speaker pursues it and that it is more than just cover for the downstate reps. This is what a Democratic Legislature should be doing.
Consider the costs to start with, at over $1 billion to build a new coal plant. CPS in Texas is spending an additional $200 million on one plant to clean the emmissions, CCS would be twice that, plus the cost of $40-50 per metric ton of CO2 for transport and storage costs (according to the low scale Euro project in Denmark).
To be a “player” in the electric market and actually have a meaningful effect on rates the state would probably have to have at least half a dozen plants, so $8 billion or so to get started.
They could buy up plants from Excelon or others, but the one’s they’d get would be older, inefficient, and dirty plants. CPS is spending almost half a billion on retrofits to four old plants that were considered “clean coal” plants when they were built less than 15 years ago.
No, the state can keep wasting my tax dollars in other ways, I’d rather keep them out of the power business.
===To be a “player” in the electric market and actually have a meaningful effect on rates the state would probably have to have at least half a dozen plants, so $8 billion or so to get started.
Or they could buy power on the open market that is lower priced than what the reverse auction did.
Except that isn’t what Madigan was proposing, according to his bill and your article.
(B) procure least-cost supply-side and demand-side resources through competitive procurement processes to meet the electricity needs of all retail customers in theservice territories of electric utilities that on January 2, 2007 served at least 100,000 customers and all other
retail customers in those service territories who elect
service by the Illinois Power Authority;
You might read the bill. That’s before it even talks about building new facilities. The idea is to remedy the problems created by the reverse auction which essentially fixed prices far higher than they should have been.
Your entire premise that somehow the electric utilities were screwed by the rate moratorium ignores that the provision of electricity could easily be done cheaper than it is currently and thus, the deregulation method is what failed. A reverse auction, as I’ve gone into in some detail does not provide the best deal for consumers. But don’t let facts get in the way of anything. I’m sure you still think California’s electric crisis was not because of Enron and others gouging the state.