“I would bet my bottom dollar that it would be replaced with renewables,” said David Woodsmall, a Jefferson City-based attorney who represents the Midwest Energy Consumers Group, which advocates for large commercial and industrial power customers — from AT&T and Tyson Foods to Walmart. “The current trend in the industry is that renewables have much better economics than building gas, coal or nuclear.”
Others, though, aren’t treating renewable replacements as an inevitability.
Owen, for instance, is bracing for a public and political debate. He thinks “all options will be on the table” if a major coal plant is shut down, and he expects to see “a lot of people pushing for natural gas.”
In 2019, when Ameren was first ordered to outfit Rush Island with scrubbers, the company was given a 2024 deadline to comply. The Sierra Club, an intervenor in the case that was originally filed at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said that deadline hasn’t changed.
