Illinois Orders Utilities to Charge Retail Suppliers for Cost of Clean Coal Plan

The Illinois Commerce Commission yesterday entered an order approving the Illinois Power Agency's 2013 default service procurement plan, which orders the utilities to procure power from a clean coal plant, and then charge retail suppliers a share of such costs.

A written order was not immediately available.

According to an ICC news release:

"Among the key revisions of the plan were new provisions approving a sourcing agreement with FutureGen 2.0, a retrofit clean-coal project scheduled for development near Meredosia in Morgan County. The sourcing agreement requires the state's electric utilities to purchase electricity from FutureGen 2.0 for 20 years, with the utilities then permitted to collect costs for the project on a pro rata basis from alternative retail electric suppliers."

Specifics, such as disposition of power and capacity from the plant given that retail suppliers will be allocated certain costs of the plant, were not provided.

As previously reported, due to the rapid increase in the number of customers buying their electricity supply from alternative suppliers rather than through the utilities, the IPA procurement plan did not call for any additional power to be purchased for 2013-2014 to serve ComEd and Ameren default service, given the existing power portfolio.

The Commission's order also approved an Illinois Power Agency proposal for using renewable energy standard compliance payments collected from hourly rate customers for payment on 20-year renewable energy contracts entered into in 2010. This proposal was unopposed in the IPA Procurement Plan proceeding. The Illinois Power Agency's 2013 plans included using alternative compliance payments, collected from alternative retail electric suppliers, to pay down existing long-term renewable energy contracts.