SPRINGFIELD – The recent winter storm and cold temperatures raised the political temperatures over the past several days with one question: Can renewables be trusted to keep the heat on?
During the recent intense winter snowstorm and a week of extreme cold temperatures in Illinois, MISO, a regional grid operator, called on utility customers to “conserve electricity due to high demand and weather conditions.” It was a position a couple of downstate Republicans said Illinois never should have been in.
Representative Charlie Meier of Okawville said it was a situation that has been created by a lack of leadership and a lack of concern about what Illinois residents have to pay for their electricity.
“We’ve pushed green energy policies forward without guaranteeing us a base load. If you wanna pull up and look at your solar use the last 10 days and see how much energy they’ve put out, until yesterday, they were still covered with snow. They weren’t putting out energy. Now we’re going to pay more of Illinois’ taxpayer dollars into battery storage, which can maybe store energy for up to four hours, or a few thousand people is ridiculous.”
Meier said he is not against wind, and he is not against solar, but the state needs a base load as well.
“We need everything. We need coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar. Until the state of Illinois realizes that, we will continue to watch our electric price skyrocket, and we will continue to see a shortage of electric in the state of Illinois.”
Representative Dave Severin of Benton has been giving the MISO report on the House floor for the past year, letting his colleagues know where Illinois is getting it’s energy, and he says the new Green deal approved by statehouse Democrats makes no sense.
“Here we’ve had enough power in the past where we could actually sell energy to other surrounding states. Now we’re having to import it. There’s a shortage. It just proves that this initiative that the other side of the aisle is trying to push makes absolutely no sense. The price of the utilities are skyrocketing and people are trying to figure out, you know, how do I pay my bills? We can be efficient with what we have on our power grid now if we’ll use some common sense.”
The energy legislation was approved during the veto session in October and was signed by the governor in early January.
Republicans and business groups criticized the bill for its reliance on a ratepayer charge to fund new battery storage and for yielding what they said was too much power to the ICC.