Who is the top climate polluter in Illinois?

Prairie State Generating Station, a coal-fired power station in Marissa, IL was the top climate polluter in Illinois and number twelve in the country for greenhouse gas emissions in 2022, according to new data released by Frontier Group, Environment America Research and Policy Center, and US PIRG Education Fund. This new data shows improvement from 2021, when Prairie State was ranked number eight in the country. 

The station produced 11.03 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2022, equivalent to the emissions produced by 2.6 million gas-powered cars in a year. 

While Prairie State is the only Illinois facility to make the national top 50, there are two more big polluters in Chicagoland– Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill in Burns Harbor, IN, and the U.S. Steel Corporation steel mill in Gary, IN. These two mills rank number forty-eight and number sixteen respectively for greenhouse gas emissions, producing a combined 17.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses in 2022. They are also noted contributors to poor air quality in the Chicagoland area, releasing staggering amounts of toxic pollution, including lead. 

These top 50 facilities in the U.S. were responsible for almost 7% of the U.S.’s total GHG emissions in 2022. Together, they produced more greenhouse gas emissions than any single state but Texas. 90% of these top 50 polluters are coal and/or gas-burning power plants, like Prairie State. The implication of that is clear: eliminating emissions from fossil-fuel burning power plants will have a significant impact in managing the worst effects of climate change and protecting public health.

The good news is, coal burning plants are on the decline, and clean energy is on the rise. The share of U.S. electricity produced by coal was surpassed by renewable energy sources in 2022. Seven of the top 50 polluters from this report have announced plans to close between 2024 and 2038. 

Prairie State is set to close by 2045, a date set by the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) signed into law by Governor Pritzker in 2021. But the national decline in coal is already reflected in Prairie State’s economics, and restrictive contracts are keeping communities on the hook to pay for increasingly expensive dirty energy. 

The Biden administration announced new rules in April that will significantly reduce power-plant pollution. One rule requires existing coal-fired plants and new gas-powered plants to cut or capture 90 percent of their carbon pollution by 2032 or shut down by 2039. Prairie State has no clear plan on how it will comply with this new rule, which requires much more significant reductions on an earlier timeline than CEJA. 

Coal-burning and gas-powered plants pollute our air, threaten our health, and intensify the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, from increased flooding to more frequent severe storms. With the amount of clean energy on the grid going up, and the cost of renewables going down, there is no excuse for continuing to allow a handful of big polluters to do so much harm.