Billions of dollars in federal production tax credits were a boon for the U.S. nuclear industry when then-President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Three years later, there’s an unexpected beneficiary: electricity customers in northern Illinois.
Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison said last week that customers will receive $803 million in bill credits in early 2026. The money is a direct pass-through of nuclear PTCs received by Constellation Energy for three of its nuclear plants. The flow through of federal tax credits is the product of a deal cut in 2021 to subsidize the plants, which were struggling financially at the time.
The credits will average about $13 a month over the first five months of next year for households, according to ComEd. They are testament to a dramatic turnaround in the power markets in the last couple of years that’s seen electricity prices surge in the PJM Interconnection power market, which spans 13 states in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic.
The credits announced last week come on top of about $1 billion in bill credits that ComEd customers in Chicago and surrounding areas have already received under Illinois’ carbon mitigation program going back to June 2022. And there’s likely more to come as power prices in PJM show no signs of easing.
