Take a drive this time of year down any state highway and you’ll likely see chipboard signs promoting this guy for sheriff and that guy for Senate. This much is true when traveling down Route 48. But along this road, which slices through the heart of Christian County, you’ll also see a slick metal sign, sitting among the prairie grasses just a mile north of Taylorville, promoting jobs, industry – and coal. “The Future Home of Taylorville Energy Center,” the sign reads, a reminder of a proposed coal-to-gas energy project that – 10 years later – has yet to arrive.
“Every election cycle, they [politicians] are standing at that sign, saying they’re for this thing,” says Jim McCoy, a lifelong resident of the sleepy town, population 11,400.
“I’m all for this thing, if it’s feasible. But I don’t like to see grant money paid out and nothing being done.”
The so-called “clean” coal project has an army of supporters – in Taylorville, in the coal industry and in the Illinois Statehouse, but it also faces fierce opposition and continues to elicit questions about its environmental effects as well as its economic practicality, considering the millions of dollars in subsidies it requires to get off the ground.
Powerful opponents say those questions are serious problems, ones that should keep the project from going forward as planned. Many who support the project disagree – they tout the 2,500 construction jobs, 155 permanent jobs and the tax revenues the $3.5 billion project promises. But they also recognize that the project’s future is less certain than its highway sign implies.
“We’re hopeful,” says Taylorville Mayor Greg Brotherton. But he points to a news segment from three or four years ago that he watched for the first time last week. “The exact same thing was being said then as it is now. We’re in the same place.”
The uncertainty could go on for years.
But possible action, or inaction, by state government this fall could signal the Taylorville Energy Center’s fate. Right now, the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) is reviewing cost reports and engineering design studies from the project’s main investor, Nebraskabased energy company Tenaska. By Sept. 2, the state agency charged with ensuring that Illinois’ public utilities are both affordable and reliable, will report to the General Assembly about how the project might affect ratepayers and competition within the electricity market. In order for the project to move forward, law makers would then have to approve legislation to implement the General Assembly’s 2009 decision to require Illinois utilities to buy energy from the plant. The measures would include a maximum return rate on Tenaska’s equity and agreements between Tenaska and electric suppliers that require customers to pay above-market prices for their electricity in order for Tenaska to pay off the loans needed to build the power plant. A vote could come during this fall’s veto session.
Money matters Tenaska contends that the market itself will not attract new energy generating facilities to Illinois; so ensuring that a company will get returns on its investment is essential. “There is no energy policy [in Illinois],” Tenaska’s vice president of business development Bart Ford