IRVING, Texas, March 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Vistra Energy
(NYSE: VST) supports legislation to be filed in the Illinois
General Assembly by State Senator Michael
Hastings and State Representative Luis Arroyo, which the company views as a
visionary and comprehensive transition plan for its subsidiaries'
central and southern Illinois coal
plants.
The Illinois Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act of 2019 will
help mitigate the uncertainty surrounding these power plants and
the impact to its employees and communities in which they operate.
It will also spur substantial investments in new renewable energy
and battery storage projects across Illinois and sustain otherwise uneconomic
generation for five years while allowing time for additional
capacity to come online.
Currently, as much as 75 percent of Vistra's subsidiaries'
downstate generation capacity located within MISO Zone 4 is at risk
of closure by the end of 2019 due to a number of factors. Vistra's
subsidiaries' nearly 5,500 megawatts of generation capacity
accounts for 40 percent of MISO Zone 4's summer capacity. Closing
all of these at-risk plants later this year could have significant
and detrimental impacts on workers and their families, communities,
grid reliability, and power prices.
"There are many challenges to operating power plants in
Illinois, from longstanding and
unresolved capacity market design flaws to delays in regulatory
updates and other economic pressures, including approval of the
revised Multi-Pollutant Standard that is critical to the proposed
legislation," said Curt Morgan,
president and CEO of Vistra and its Illinois subsidiaries. "This bill establishes
a reasonable and achievable path to transition existing coal power
plants to renewable sources of utility-scale solar and energy
storage that help meet the state's evolving energy goals.
Importantly, this legislation will also allow for the transition of
jobs and support the economies of impacted communities while
leading to significant reductions in power plant emissions – most
notably greenhouse gas – something Governor Pritzker has made a
priority for my home state of Illinois," added Morgan.
The Illinois Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act will:
- Redevelop downstate coal plant sites into utility-scale
solar and energy storage, resulting in approximately 500 MW of
new, renewable generation. The new facilities must be commercially
available between 2021 and 2022.
- Help meet Illinois'
commitments to emission reductions and the Paris Climate
Agreement by reducing Vistra's subsidiaries' total fleet
emissions by 75 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. For each megawatt
of new utility-scale solar and battery storage installed at
existing coal plants, five times as many megawatts of existing
coal-fueled generation must be retired by 2030.
- Increase grid stability, reliability, and renewable
resources through energy storage. Stand-alone energy storage
would be built at existing coal power plant sites that cannot be
repurposed into utility-scale solar generation.
- Responsibly retire existing downstate capacity by
keeping otherwise at-risk plants online through 2024. This provides
sufficient time for new renewable generation, transmission, and
energy efficiency projects to materialize while also providing more
stability for grid reliability and power prices.
- Provide an orderly transition process for energy workers
and plant communities.
- Reinvest in downstate plant communities and support local
business property tax base by continuing to operate on the
existing plant sites with new renewable assets, rather than simply
retiring and closing coal plants.
Vistra's leadership has expressed a desire to create a
sustainable business model in Illinois, though its subsidiaries cannot
continue to operate uneconomic plants. This bill calls for reusing
Vistra's robust footprint of land and transmission access at
current plant sites to reduce costs and time of deploying
utility-scale solar and energy storage across the state. The
legislation would help Vistra's subsidiaries to bring these
technologies to Illinois just as
they have brought them to other parts of the country.
Vistra has established itself as a leader in solar and energy
storage by developing the largest battery energy storage system in
the world, a 300-MW/1,200-MWh system in Moss Landing, California. The company also
operates the seventh largest battery in the nation which sits on
the site of its 180-MW Upton 2 Solar Power Plant, the largest
operating solar facility in Texas.
The company has launched a website at
www.renewillinoispower.com to further explain this bill and
its position.
Digital
www.renewillinoispower.com
www.vistraenergy.com
Media
Meranda Cohn
214-875-8004
Media.Relations@vistraenergy.com
Investors
Molly Sorg
214-812-0046
Investor@vistraenergy.com
About Vistra Energy
Vistra Energy (NYSE: VST) is a premier, integrated power company
based in Irving, Texas, combining
an innovative, customer-centric approach to retail with a focus on
safe, reliable, and efficient power generation. Through its retail
and generation businesses which include TXU Energy, Homefield
Energy, Dynegy, and Luminant, Vistra operates in 12 states and six
of the seven competitive markets in the U.S., with about 5,400
employees. Vistra's retail brands serve approximately 2.9 million
residential, commercial, and industrial customers across five top
retail states, and its generation fleet totals approximately 41,000
megawatts of highly efficient generation capacity, with a diverse
portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, coal, solar, and battery storage
facilities. The company is currently developing the largest battery
energy storage system of its kind in the world – a 300-MW/1,200-MWh
system in Moss Landing,
California.
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SOURCE Vistra Energy