Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed [bill status] SB2814 [text], also known as the Future Energy Jobs Bill, into law on Wednesday. The benefits of the bill [advocacy materials, PDF] had been touted as increasing energy efficiency, expanding renewable energy, providing zero-carbon incentives for nuclear power plants at-risk of closure, additional funding for low-income assistance, job training, and cap of electricity increases. The job training provisions include funding for solar training, craft apprenticeship training related to the electric industry, and multi-cultural job programs. The bill restricts [Chicago Sun Times report] rate increases to $0.25 per month for for residential customers and 1.3 percent for commercial customers. The most controversial part of the bill is the zero-carbon incentives for the nuclear power plants. The incentives save 1,500 jobs at the Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear power plants, while opponents call the incentives a corporate bailout. The zero-emissions incentives are to last 10 years. The bill also allows the creation of a microgrid, whose purpose will be

to explore a variety of objectives, including, but not limited to, (i) alternatives to upgrading the conventional electric grid, (ii) ways to improve electric grid resiliency, security, and outage management for critical facilities and customers and thus reduce the frequency, duration, and cost of major outages, (iii) how to improve the safety and security of critical electric infrastructure, including cyber security, for the benefit of the public, (iv) innovative approaches to facilitating high penetration levels of distributed energy resources and new distributed energy technologies, and (v) the opportunity for new technology business models, customer awareness, smart city and community of the future applications, network communication capabilities, energy efficiency and demand management efforts, and other energy consumer-based and utility approaches.

The bill is to become effective June 1.

This is not the only energy bill to create controversy due to incentives to nuclear power plants. In August New York Governor Andrew Cuoemo announced [press release] the establishment of the Clean Energy Standard. The standard provides assistance to upstate New York nuclear power plants to prevent their closure while also requiring that 50 percent of New York’s electricity will come from renewable energy by 2030. A lawsuit was filed [NYT report] in October over the plan, stating that the subsidies for the Nine Mile, Ginna, and Fitzpatrick nuclear power plants “oversteps the federal government’s policy of allowing market forces to set wholesale energy prices.” Switzerland previously voted to reject [JURIST report] a referendum that would have included a 45-year phase out of nuclear power.