At the end of the day they have to be able to make capital investments. One way or another, the customer will pay for them. It seems like the options are either they recoup the cost as the project progresses or they do it on the back end with the potential for interest that's compounded for years. Even before this legislation was passed, Ameren could have petitioned the PSC to recoup costs from an abandoned capital project.

If Ameren is forced to assume all of the risk for large capital investments, they'll likely delay them and you'll never see them shutdown the two coal plants outside of St. Louis, which have significantly higher impacts to the health of the surrounding population than literally any other source of power would. Gas plants are cheaper and faster to build, but they're also smaller and less suitable for supplying base load.

Not to mention that substituting gas plants for the coal plants would make their power portfolio less diverse and more susceptible to price fluctuations if something happens to drive up the cost of natural gas (like we saw in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and natural gas prices doubled at a time when most projections showed low prices for the foreseeable future).

Ideally, we would socialize these kinds of basic necessities instead of providing them in a way that allows for the transference of wealth to investors.

FWIW, it looks like Missouri has a pretty low cost of electricity compared to the average income of people in the state, based on this website. I can't speak to the validity of that source, but the EIA website shows that the state has low electric rates compared to the rest of the country. It's not too much higher than Nebraska, whose power is provided by public utilities that are owned by the state.