DeKalb Times

Whodathunkit?  Taxpayer assistance to relieve the pain of government failure.

On Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker proudly announced a whopping $300 million of cash assistance for Illinoisans struggling  with energy bills. “Every Illinoisan deserves access to reliable  energy—regardless of their economic status,” Pritzker said in his press  release.

That’s just the latest result of Illinois’ foundering energy policy but, first, note that the new program is for natural gas, propane and electricity (only about 10% of which is  from renewable projects). Those are the very energy sources that  Illinois is in the process of deliberately trying to destroy.

Illinois plans to have 50% of its  electricity production from renewable sources by 2040 and 100% from  clean energy sources by 2050. That’s under CEJA (Illinois’ Climate and  Equitable Jobs Act), which became law last year and was correctly called  by one of its sponsors “the most aggressive, most progressive climate bill in the nation.”

It’s all part of what two leading supporters openly call an “industrial policy.” That was in a Chicago Tribune op-ed last week by Kady McFadden, a former deputy director at Sierra Club  “whose work was instrumental in passing” CEJA, and Ameya Pawar, a former  Chicago alderman who was also active in forming Illinois’ energy  policy.

The first “case in point” of what they call  in their column a “thoughtful industrial policy” is the financial  support Illinois taxpayers are providing to Illinois electric vehicle  makers. Illinois last year set out to become the national leader in electric vehicles and their batteries with its Reimagining Electric Vehicles Act.

But reimagine this: The plan is failing.

Details are in a Crain’s report last week. “Pritzker’s vision of Illinois as an electric vehicle  production hub is in danger of becoming a pipe dream,” Crain’s says.  “Illinois still hasn’t landed a factory that produces the most valuable  component of electric vehicles—the batteries that make them go.”  Illinois is 0 for 18 in the competition for battery plants.

Crain’s identified another problem  discouraging manufacturers of anything – not just EVs – from coming to  Illinois: CEJA “is expected to drive up electricity costs, a major  expense for manufacturers.” Historically, Illinois had comparatively  inexpensive electricity thanks to market-based competition for the best  sources. But policy now favoring more expensive renewable sources is  turning into another disadvantage in the competition for investment and  jobs.

Illinois consumers are already getting slammed. Roughly the southern two-thirds of Illinois  is seeing a 50% jump in electricity cost and is at “severe risk” of brownouts.

Defenders of CEJA are often saying that it  isn’t to blame for rising costs. CEJA, they note, only became law last  year and the shutdown of coal plants, which is causing much of the  problem, was announced earlier.

That’s hardly convincing. Pritzker and the  General Assembly put a target on the back of all fossil fuel plants long  ago. He campaigned on a goal of 100% renewables and made it a priority  upon taking office over three years ago. Even then, legislation had  already set the impossible goal of 25% renewables by 2025. That goal was  clearly an illusion and won’t be met.

On a more fundamental level, this isn’t  complicated. Illinois simply does not have adequate capacity to deliver  electricity reliably at a good price. Higher prices and brownout risk  prove that. The government simply blew it with policies that we now know  did not match capacity with demand.

The most frightening, new warnings of the consequences of naively aggressive green energy policy are from California and Europe.

California, which is right up with Illinois in green ambitions, this week issued an energy conservation emergency alert and is asking consumers to avoid charging EVs.

Most of Europe is in crisis. Companies large and small are cutting back or closing entirely due to  high energy prices. People are hoarding firewood. The continent faces a  true catastrophe this winter. Their problem is mostly caused by foolish  reliance on natural gas from Russia, but green overoptimism has  contributed.

Illinois’ energy policy still includes a  complete moratorium on new nuclear plants, even though nuclear is making  a “remarkable comeback” elsewhere in the world, as described here. Even climate alarmist National Public Radio reports that environmentalists are now embracing nuclear energy.

Such is Illinois’ “industrial policy” that its architects are so proud of.

You’d think they’d have chosen a better  term. Even to those of us who aren’t free market purists, “industrial  policy” has very derogatory connotations, and rightfully so.  It means central planning and statism, which typically fail because the  government is particularly bad at picking winners and losers or looking  into the future. It’s better to let the private sector take the losses  gambling on that, as some of us see things, and the private sector is  more likely to get it right.

Industrial policies are also prone to the politics of the day. So it was with CEJA, which is jam-packed with social justice goals. In  CEJA’s 956 pages, “equity” appears 114 times and “environmental  justice” appears 86 times. It amounts to micro-management of Illinois’  energy sector by bureaucrats.

All that costs money. Lots of it. The total cost of CEJA has been estimated at more than $800 million annually plus another $1.2 billion annually  in higher electricity rates. Estimates, however, vary widely, and nobody  truly knows the full cost.

The lesson Illinois is learning is not that  renewable energy sources have no place in a long-term solution. They  do. It’s just that they aren’t remotely close to being ready enough, and  the consequences of pretending otherwise are materializing faster than  anybody expected.

“We  will sell no wine before it’s time” was Orson Welles’ line in a  commercial decades ago for Paul Masson wine. “We will rely on no  technology before it’s time” should have been a cornerstone in Illinois’  energy policy. The consequences of that mistake are rapidly becoming  apparent.