Houston based Dynegy energy company now owns five more coal-fired power plants in Illinois.
Dynegy bought the plants, including one in southern Illinois, from St. Louis-based Ameren. The companies announced Monday that the transaction was complete. Dynegy now owns nine coal-fired plants in Illinois.
The deal was finalized almost two weeks after Dynegy received a five-year pollution-control waiver from the Illinois Pollution Control Board. The company had said the deal hinged on getting permission to delay installed soot-control upgrades at the plants until 2020. The Joppa Steam Generation Plant in Massac County was recently cited in a studey by the Environment America Research and Policy Center as one of the worst environmental polluters for carbon dioxide emissions in the state. Dynegy is also purchasing plants in Fulton, Peoria, Montgomery, and Jasper counties.
Ameren officials say they are divesting of its so-called merchant business. Electricity from those plants is sold on the open market, but Ameren wants to concentrate on its rate-regulated electric, natural gas and transmission operations in Illinois and Missouri.
