

Hope you had a restful weekend. Time to kick off the week with two states hashing out the future of clean energy.
Jeff dug into both stories for Canary Media. Here’s what you need to know.
Illinois generates more nuclear power than any other U.S. state. That carbon-free source delivers 58 percent of net electricity production, followed by coal and natural gas; renewables rank a distant fourth.
But renewables are growing, while the nuclear plants are in danger of shutting down due to low market revenue.
Renewables developers and nuclear companies don’t always pursue the same policies. But both stand to gain from this legislation:
But allies of a handful of coal and gas plants that don’t want to be shuttered appear to be holding up the deal.
The Illinois Senate adjourned last week without resolving the dispute. Stakeholders hope the legislature will reconvene and pass the deal this summer.
The stakes are highest for the nuclear plants; losing them would forfeit a massive amount of carbon-free generation that’s already here, whereas a delay in funding new solar programs threatens things that haven’t been built yet.
Wholesale markets without a carbon price don’t factor in the value of round-the-clock carbon-free power. Illinois is attempting to move its entire grid to round-the-clock carbon-free power. We’ll see if some or all of this deal makes it across the finish line.
Republican legislators in North Carolina unveiled their own epic clean energy bill this week, which they crafted behind closed doors.
It contains some wins for clean energy:
But the package also gets prescriptive with how Duke should replace certain power plants.
Legislators will have to choose how much they want to indulge Duke’s monopoly status or expose it to competitive pressures. This creates some unusual political fault lines.
Democratic Governor Roy Cooper wants to open up more room for energy providers to compete to deliver new projects.
Exposure to market forces could make it harder for Duke to earn the money it wants to make from its customers. And it could undermine the utility’s hopes of building a bunch more gas plants before zeroing out its carbon emissions over the next 29 years.
If you had to wager your own money that a large gas plant would remain profitable for the next three decades, you might be inclined to check what other options are out there. The extent to which Duke feels that pressure is now up for debate.
(Image: “Installing solar panels” by OregonDOT is licensed under CC BY 2.0)
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Julian Spector is senior reporter at Canary Media.