Facebook parent Meta said Tuesday that it has signed a 20-year agreement to buy about 1.1 gigawatts of electricity from the Clinton nuclear power plant, starting in 2027, to support its "AI ambitions." The deal ensures the closest nuclear plant to Bloomington-Normal will remain open after being at risk for closure.
Constellation Energy President and CEO Joe Dominguez said the company was proud to pair with Meta. He said the tech company determined that "supporting the relicensing and expansion of existing plants is just as impactful as finding new sources of energy."
“Sometimes the most important part of our journey forward is to stop taking steps backwards,” Dominguez said.
This partnership will ensure long-term operation of the nuclear plant, add 30 new megawatts of capacity, and will help maintain 1,100 jobs, the companies said Tuesday. That 30-megawatt boost would be about 3% of the existing capacity.
"And that is essentially done through advanced monitoring and technical procedures which allow us to safely increase the output of the plant," said Mason Emnett, Constellation senior vice president of public policy.
"Securing clean, reliable energy is necessary to continue advancing our AI ambitions,” Urvi Parekh, head of global energy at Meta, said in a statement. “We are proud to help keep the Clinton plant operating for years to come and demonstrate that this plant is an important piece to strengthening American leadership in energy.”
The Clinton Clean Energy Center began operating in 1987. It's located about 30 miles southeast of Bloomington-Normal.
The plant was first headed for closure in 2017 after years of financial losses, despite being one of the best performing nuclear plants in Illinois, according to Constellation.
State lawmakers saved the plant — at least until 2027 — with passage of the Future Energy Jobs Act and its Zero Emission Credit program. But that state program ends in mid-2027. The deal with Meta keeps the plant operating beyond that date.
"So, it's effectively allowing us to transition from state support to private support, achieving the same clean energy benefits from the state but having a private contracting entity supporting us with the clean energy attribute transaction," said Constellation's Mason Emnett.
Emnett declined to say whether Meta will be paying more than the state pays to support the plant.
The plant won't directly power Meta's data centers.
"The power purchase agreement [PPA] will enable the Clinton Clean Energy Center to continue to flow power onto the local grid, providing grid reliability and low-cost power to the region for decades to come," the companies said. "Meta is purchasing the plant’s clean energy attributes as part of its commitment to match 100% of its electricity use with clean and renewable energy."
The plant directly employs over 530 people and generates enough carbon-free electricity to power over 800,000 homes.
Consumer impacts
Michael Brown, executive director of Ecology Action Center in Normal, said the Meta deal is not good for consumers, who are already seeing much higher prices for electricity.
“We’re looking at further price increases and perhaps shortages,” Brown said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
Brown said the expansion of AI will drive up energy demand to unsustainable levels.
“It is a game that is coming with significant costs to our local energy supply,” Brown said.
Utility company Ameren says about 14% of its energy for Illinois comes from nuclear power, 40% from natural gas, 27% from coal, 15% wind and 2% solar.
Brown said McLean County has been a strong adopter of wind and solar energy, which he hopes will continue to expand to meet future energy needs.
He mentioned Ecology Action Center has several initiatives that aim to boost solar production, including Grow Solar Bloomington-Normal and Community Solar.
Second reactor in Clinton?
It's not just Meta's AI that is driving demand. Gov. JB Pritzker is openly courting new data centers, which support IT infrastructure in several ways including storage, managing, processing, connectivity, security, and disaster recovery. All that takes significant amounts of electricity.
Emnett said renewable energy generating capacity will continue to grow as will energy storage options. He said Constellation believes there will be enough growth in demand for the company to consider building a second reactor at Clinton.
Back in the 1980s, then-owner Illinois Power Company received federal approval for a second reactor, but high costs associated with the first plant ended construction. It's possible some of those early permissions could be reused, he said, though it would take a years-long process to get Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval to proceed.
Emnett said it is unclear whether Constellation would want to build a reactor of a comparable capacity to the existing generator or a smaller one. It could depend on the needs of a dedicated customer.
Nuclear skeptics have pointed to huge cost overruns at a new large scale nuclear plant in Georgia, the first new plant in the nation since the 1980s. But Emnett said there has been a learning curve there by both the utility company and regulators who had to stand up review processes unused for decades. Emnett noted the second reactor in Georgia cost 30% less than the first to build.
He said there is no particular timeline for Constellation to decide on a second Dewitt County reactor.
