It’s never a surprise to see a big fish eating a little fish, but even by Springfield standards, this is ridiculous.
A proposal to build a $3 billion natural gas plant on an abandoned Southeast Side steel site may or may not be a good deal for the people of Illinois. But the way this facility’s costs would be parceled out under current legislation is so utterly unfair that unless it changes, the project must be scuttled.
The massive plant at 11600 S. Burley Ave. would convert coal and refinery waste to gas. It’s akin to a proposed clean-coal project for electricity generation in downstate Taylorville.
Under a bill hastily approved by the Illinois House in November, the gas produced by the Chicago plant would be allocated on an equal basis to the four utilities involved, with one-quarter of the total output going to each.
That’s a problem: Those four utilities aren’t equal by a long shot. Nicor Inc. is more than twice as big as Peoples Gas and Ameren. And North Shore Gas is only about one-fifth of the size of Peoples and Ameren, yet it would be required to take the same amount of the synthetic product.
This raw deal would lock North Shore Gas, which has the same corporate owner as Peoples, into a decades-long contract for a huge share of its basic commodity at what are expected to be above-market rates. That would put an indefensible burden on the 54 communities it serves.
Its territory includes Winnetka, Glencoe and other affluent communities that some pols might think are inviting targets. Soak the rich and all that. But North Shore Gas also serves Waukegan, Zion, North Chicago and other communities where ratepayers can ill-afford to bear higher heating bills, no matter what the pols seem to think.
This bill got rammed through the House with scant review, probably as part of a log-rolling scheme to secure Chicago-area votes for the Taylorville project. Advocates for the Chicago project point to a fund that would make up some of the extra costs for North Shore Gas, but it’s grossly insufficient.
At a minimum, state lawmakers have to correct their mistake and distribute the gas proportionately, based on the size of the utilities involved. But that’s not to say such a move would create a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. This whole project needs a thorough vetting of the costs and benefits to consumers.
Our nation obtains almost half its electrical power from coal, and Illinois has a rich supply. It’s well worth exploring cutting-edge technology to use this resource in a more responsible, eco-friendly fashion. But we can’t afford to proceed at any cost, and certainly not if it means standing by while dealmakers in Springfield feed one constituency to the piranhas.
