Although a new legislation sets deadlines for fossil- fuel power facilities Illinois coal mining continues to be a major source of climate- changing emissions

Although a new legislation sets deadlines for fossil-fuel power facilities

Illinois coal mining continues to be a major source of climatechanging emissions

wiTh a new sTaTe law ThaT bans coal and gas-Fired power by 2045, Gov. J.B. Pritzker promises that Illinois will help stop — and even reverse — climate change. However, the rule ignores the state's most significant source of climate-changing pollution: coal mining.

According to a Chicago Tribune estimate based on a calculation created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, out-of-state corporations burning Illinois coal discharged more than 57 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the sky in 2020 alone.

The state's coal and gas plants, on the other hand, emitted 46 million tons of CO2 throughout the year. The disparity underscores Illinois' continued role as a major coal supplier, even as the state and the country as a whole move away from coal-fired power generation.

Pritzker and state lawmakers avoided publicly tackling Illinois' coal sector because it produces jobs and pay taxes, albeit with a fraction of the employees it formerly employed in a section of the state nearer to Tupelo, Mississippi, compared to Chicago. "It's one aspect to hault importing coal into your territory but another to completely stop mining the same well within your own borders," commented Barry Rabe.

He is a teacher of public policy at the University of Michigan and studies issues related to energy.

According to federal figures, Illinois was only third in the amount of coal pulled out of the ground last year, behind Wyoming, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Foresight Energy, a bankrupt St. Louis-based firm that obtained the rights to latent coal seams in four southern Illinois counties in the mid-2000s, supplied more than half of the 32 million tons mined in Illinois.

Almost all of Foresight's coal is exported to other states and nations. Longwall mining, which uses robotic equipment rather than people to mine coal, saves

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money for the corporation. With twice as many personnel, the state's coal sector was able to generate nearly the same quantity of coal last year as it did in 2003.

Foresight proclaimed its presence with more than $3 million in campaign contributions dispersed among Illinois legislators, including several who also worked at state agencies governing the sector, decades before the climate impact of burning coal was generally understood.

For the time being, the only thing preventing Foresight's largest mine from polluting the planet more is an underground fire that halted production a few days back in the month of September.

The fire, which triggered the evacuation of the Sugar Camp mine in Franklin County, 270 miles southwest of Chicago, is still being investigated by federal and state investigators. Officials from the company did not reply to calls for comment.

It was at least the second time one of Foresight's mines had been shut down by the fire. The firm's Deer Run complex in Montgomery County started smoking in 2014.

It didn't reopen until 2019, when federal officials permitted a new underground shaft to an unexplored area of the coal seam.

Foresight also owns a mine in Macoupin County that is currently dormant, as well as another in Williamson County.

Records demonstrate that all four mines consistently violate federal workplace safety and clean water requirements.

Five of the 16 Illinois miners murdered on the job since 2008 worked in Sugar Camp, where the injury rate has at times topped the national average.

Joyce observed the state lately approved an expansion of Deer Run that could enable the mine to continue operating for another three decades. Last year, the carbon dioxide generated by Foresight's coal in power stations and factories was greater than from automobiles registered in Illinois.

However, coal mining was not mentioned by Pritzker on Wednesday when he stated that countries must act immediately to combat the fast-accelerating effects of climate change.

The governor claimed the new energy law makes Illinois "a force for good" and promises "an environmental future we can be proud of" during a bill-signing event outside the Shedd Aquarium. other incentives for electric automobiles, wind power, and solar energy, among other things.

It adds an extra $700 million to ratepayers' bills to help Chicago-based Exelon, which threatened to shut down two nuclear power reactors unless Pritzker and lawmakers approved the bailout. As a result, tens of thousands of union workers will preserve their employment. Continued operation of the carbon-free plants could help prevent the new gasfired generation and stabilize the grid as more wind and solar electricity come online, which is good for health and the environment.

According to federal figures, Illinois was only third in the amount of coal pulled out of the ground last year, behind Wyoming, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Foresight Energy, a bankrupt St. Louis-based firm that obtained the rights to latent coal seams in four southern Illinois counties in the mid-2000s, supplied more than half of the 32 million tons mined in Illinois.

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Toxic coal ash waste, the red material in the river bank, from Dynegy’s Vermilion Power Plant in Oakwood, Illinois, can be seen leaking into the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River.

The governor claimed the new energy law makes Illinois "a force for good" and promises "an environmental future we can be proud of" during a bill-signing event outside the Shedd Aquarium.

Coal-fired power plants, which Pritzker and lawmakers have targeted, are already being phased out. All but three of Illinois' 11 nuclear power plants are set to shut down by 2027 at the earliest.

Only those who survive will be able to use Illinois coal. In the beginning 1990s, most of the state's utilities decided that switching to low-sulfur Wyoming coal instead of constructing pollution-control equipment to scrub high-sulfur Illinois coal was a more cost-effective way to comply with the federal Clean Air Act.

The Prairie State Generating Station, southeast of St. Louis, is the largest industrial carbon dioxide generator constructed in the U.S. in the last quarter-century. 5 Chicago suburbs and many other Midwestern communities matched to collectively take on more than $5 billion in debt to finance Prairie State in the mid-2000s. Private investors abandoned dozens of similar projects due to skyrocketing construction costs and the likelihood that climate pollution would eventually be regulated.

Municipal investors campaigned against Pritzker's initial proposal to close the coal plant by 2030, including Batavia, Geneva, Naperville, St. Charles, and Winnetka. After months of delays, supporters of the energy bill decided to further the deadline, allowing Prairie State and a municipally owned coal plant in Springfield until 2035 to reduce CO2 outputs by 45% and another decade after that to either eradicate or shut down climate pollution.

Prairie State gets its coal through a mine in Washington County near the power station, a deal pushed through by Peabody Energy, a St. Louis-based coal company that later sold its 5% investment in the project at a loss. By the state's carbon-free electricity deadline of 2045, Illinois towns are projected to have paid off their portion of the debt.

Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh said that the transition to clean energy would prevent up to 62 premature deaths across the state each year.

One of the environmentalists working on the energy bill noted official data showing that coal production is dropping across the country.

The mines that give for Prairie State and the Dallman plant in Springfield contributed approximately a fifth of the state's coal last year, a clean-energy advocate for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.