Posts Tagged ‘Illinois’
Chicago considers following other towns’ lead on bulk-rate power
>> Chicago Tribune
Chicago aldermen are weighing whether to ask voters in November if the city should try to negotiate lower electric rates for residents and small retailers — a step approved by voters in more than 200 Illinois villages and cities in March.
Ameren plans Illinois transmission line to carry power eastward
>> Springfield State Journal-Register
The 330-mile, 345,000-volt line from Quincy, Illinois, to Terre Haute, Indiana, would carry electricity from the upper Midwest to Eastern power grids.
Editorial: ‘Clean’ coal minus the coal
>> Chicago Tribune
Given the trends in natural-gas production, coal-to-gas projects look more like white elephants than ever. Making a synthetic version of a product found in growing abundance makes no economic sense.
Despite switch to natural gas, Tenaska plant still faces opposition
>> Springfield State Journal-Register
A coalition that includes Exelon and environmental groups said it will continue to work against a bill in the Illinois General Assembly that the company needs to have passed this spring to allow the plant to go forward.
High-speed rail complicates development plans in Illinois city
>> Springfield State Journal-Register
Increased traffic from high-speed passenger and freight trains is the big unknown for the future of downtown Springfield, local officials told a team of urban-design specialists from across the country Monday.
Tenaska offers to drop coal plant plan for natural gas
>> Chicago Tribune
In a closed-door meeting Tuesday in Springfield, Tenaska offered to power the proposed plant with natural gas instead of coal, a move that would reduce construction costs by two-thirds to about $1.1 billion and could diffuse opposition to the plant.
Habitat homes achieve efficiency and affordability
A Habitat for Humanity chapter in North Carolina built this zero-energy house in 2005, thought to be the first of its kind in the state. (Photo by skrobotic via Creative Commons)
Volunteers last year helped East Central Minnesota Habitat for Humanity build one of the state’s most energy-efficient homes.
The 1,100-square-foot ranch-style house in Princeton, Minnesota, includes a solar water heater, exterior insulation, and Energy Star appliances.
Altogether, those and other energy saving features are expected to help the single mother who bought the home save $769 annually on her utility bills.
Across the country, Habitat for Humanity is demonstrating that efficiency and affordability can go together. Its leaders are making the case that a little extra upfront investment in efficiency pays off in the long run.
“We can’t afford not to,” says Molly Berg, sustainable buildings specialist at Habitat for Humanity of Minnesota. “Small changes that we can make up front during the planning and construction process actually result in long-term, large changes in the abilities of a family to meet their basic needs.”
As energy efficiency advocates (including Fresh Energy, which publishes Midwest Energy News) press for tougher energy codes in Minnesota, Illinois and elsewhere, they’re pointing to affordable housing supporters such as Habitat to help make their case.
Bill Fay, executive director of the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, a program of the Alliance to Save Energy, said he began reaching out to low-income housing groups about five years ago in California.
“I was getting a little tired of the National Association of Home Builders trying to speak for low-income families,” says Fay.
A common argument made by home builders’ associations is that requiring them to build more efficient homes will put ownership out of reach for people with lower incomes.
But many Habitat for Humanity chapters have taken the opposite approach in recent years, putting more money into efficiency even during a severe recession.
All of the homes built since 2008 by Habitat for Humanity St. Louis have been LEED Platinum certified, and one project in 2010 achieve LEED Gold.
In Lansing, Michigan, officials and donors broke ground last week on the first of four green, energy efficient Habitat homes.
And in Iowa City, a chapter is getting ready to build its first net-zero-energy home, which will draw the little energy it needs from solar panels and solar water heaters.
Habitat is made up of scores of independent chapters around the country and world. The organization’s state and national offices support the local chapters, but doesn’t speak for them or set policy.
A survey sent to Minnesota chapters five years ago showed a desire for more resources on sustainable building, which led to a green building conference in 2008 and the hiring of a sustainable building specialist.
Several local chapters were already moving in the same direction, and Berg now helps coordinate training and other support around sustainable building in the state.
All but a few of Minnesota’s 33 chapters have since built homes that meet or exceed Energy Star for homes. The methods and materials being used include installing windows that transfer less heat, covering homes with exterior “blue board” insulation and spacing studs 24 inches apart instead of 16 inches, which creates fewer gaps in wall insulation.
The state office has been tracking Habitat homes’ energy use since the 2009-2010 heating season. The average monthly heating bill has been $110, compared to almost $170 for an average Minnesota home.
“Affiliates have seen the value and the continuous return on investment these things have for families that don’t make as much money a year,” says Berg.
That nearly $60 average monthly wintertime savings has a greater impact for families making 30 percent to 80 percent of median income, the target demographic for Habitat buyers.
There is an added upfront cost, which gets passed on to the home buyer (Habitat sells its homes at-cost with zero-interest loans to families that qualify).
“We have seen a little bit of an uptick [in costs],” says Matt Clark, Habitat’s national director for construction technologies, “but nothing that throws it way out of whack.”
Often its just a couple thousand dollars or less. In the Iowa City the solar and other improvements are expected to add about $15,000 for a home that would otherwise cost about $125,000 to build.
“My guess is that the extra item payback will be [in] 10 to 15 years, but the life of those [additions] will be over 20 years, so there’s actually a net gain there,” Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity Director Mark Patton told The Daily Iowan.
While many Habitat chapters are deciding efficiency is a worthwhile investment, they’ve been quiet in the arguments over state energy code updates.
For Clark and others in the organization, it’s less a political concern and more a practical one: “It just makes sense for us.”
Ameren seeks more time to meet Illinois pollution standards
>> St. Louis Business Journal
Ameren Energy Resources filed a petition Thursday with the Illinois Pollution Control Board, seeking more time to meet certain emissions standards established by the Illinois Multi-Pollutant Standards.
ALEC disclosure language in Illinois fracking bill
© 2012 E&E Publishing, LLC
Reprinted with permission
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Hydraulic fracturing rules moving through the Illinois Statehouse this session have taken their cue from model legislation supported by an influential conservative think tank.
The Illinois chemical disclosure legislation, which passed unanimously through the state Senate last week, includes language that copies almost verbatim a new Texas law and a subsequent model bill from the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
The language originated in Texas in 2011 and requires well operators to reveal chemicals used in the fracking process, which shoots sand, water and chemicals into the ground to release gas. An exception, heavily favored by the industry, allows companies to protect qualified chemical concoctions as trade secrets. Those exceptions can be challenged by certain landowners and state agencies.
ALEC members, who meet three times a year to discuss policy trends and propose legislation, used the Texas bill to draft a model last year. The draft is available as a resource for all members of the organization.
Dan Eichholz, associate director of the Illinois Petroleum Council — a state office of the American Petroleum Institute — said the council consulted with ALEC when negotiating disclosure requirements of the Illinois bill. ALEC did not approach the council first, he added.
“I don’t think it really makes a difference which group it comes from,” he said, noting that the Illinois bill, introduced by Democratic state Sen. Michael Frerichs, has received support from the oil and gas industry, environmentalists and the Illinois Farm Bureau.
Jack Darin, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, said he supported the legislation as a good starting point to regulate not-yet-blooming fracking action in Illinois.
“This is a really rare opportunity for us to actually get it right from the beginning,” he said. Oil and gas companies working in the state are reportedly drilling their first test wells in southern Illinois this month to see how much shale gas is available. It makes sense, Darin said, for legislators to look for best practices from other states, like Texas.
That is the purpose of any model bill, said Todd Wynn, director of ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture task force, who wrote in a March blog post that the chemical disclosure model was also catching on in Indiana, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“ALEC model bills are example bills which can easily be tailored by a state legislator to fit his or her constituents needs,” he wrote in an email to EnergyWire.
The source bill in Texas was widely supported last year by groups as varied as the Environmental Defense Fund and well operator Southwest Resources Inc. Ultimately, the bill received 137 votes in favor with eight legislators opposed and two present but not voting.
Ky Ash, chief of staff to bill sponsor Rep. Jim Keffer (R), said the disclosure requirements were “highly negotiated” but did not face interference from ALEC. The council support of the chemical disclosure bill came “completely after the fact,” he said.
He encouraged other states to copy the Texas language and adjust it for their needs. “Why reinvent the wheel entirely,” he asked, “when someone’s already gone through the tough battles?”
Alex Mills, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, which represents small and midsized companies, added that duplication of language across states is business-friendly.
“If they can follow the Texas Legislature,” he said, “it would make it easier on companies that operated in multiple states.”
Chicago coal plants to shut down sooner than expected
>> Midwest Energy News
Activists protest the Crawford power plant in Chicago in April, 2011. (Photo by Rainforest Action Network via Creative Commons)
May 2, 2012
By Kari Lydersen
Chicago’s two coal plants will close earlier than expected, according to a May 2 announcement by Midwest Generation, with both plants closing in September.
Previously the Fisk Generating Station was scheduled to close by the end of this year and the Crawford Generating Station by the end of 2014.
Midwest Generation president Douglas McFarlan said by email it was “purely an economic decision, very consistent with what dozens of others coal plant owners have done this year due to depressed power prices and forecasts overlaid with challenges for retrofitting smaller units.”
McFarlan said that in January, the “retirement queue” of plants expected to close in the PJM Interconnection, where the Chicago plants sell their power, was about 4,000 MW by 2015. “Today it is over 16,000 MW; we added 850 MW with the Chicago shutdowns,” he said.
Environmental and public health groups that have pushed for the closings for more than a decade – making them a national symbol of campaigns against coal-fired power – cheered the announcement, and highlighted the fact that the expedited closings were ultimately driven by economics.
“Coal is not just harmful to public health and air quality; it’s bad for business too,” said Faith Bugel, a senior attorney for the Environmental Law and Policy Center, in a statement. “Clean energy is where the jobs are now.”
Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of Edison International, had agreed to the previous closing dates in February, after talks between environmental and health groups and Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In exchange, environmental groups dropped a Clean Air Act lawsuit charging that all six of Midwest Generation’s Illinois plants violated emissions standards.
Earlier this year the company had also told investors that they would be evaluating the future of the entire Illinois fleet, which sells power on the spot market and has become increasingly less profitable because of competition from cheap natural gas.
Last week the Sierra Club released a report finding the remaining four Illinois plants cannot operate profitably if they install pollution controls mandated by 2017 under state and federal law. The report also cited findings by the PJM Interconnection indicating that grid stability and reliability would not be affected by the closure of any of Midwest Generation’s Illinois plants.
The Sierra Club and ELPC are members of RE-AMP, which publishes Midwest Energy News.
Environmental leaders said the stepped-up Chicago closing dates and the possible closings of other Midwest Generation plants mean there is increased urgency to facilitate renewable energy development in Illinois, specifically wind energy.
“We know that it’s only a matter of time before Illinois moves to cleaner sources of energy, we just need to be ready for that,” said Illinois Sierra Club director Jack Darin. “We can’t control the schedule that the corporations operate on, but what we can do is prepare for something better and cleaner – whether it’s at the local level working with municipalities to build municipal energy programs or at the state level, improving state clean energy policies.”
Greenpeace senior field organizer Edyta Sitko agreed that while environmental groups see the plant closings as a victory, they also want Midwest Generation or its parent company Edison International to invest in more wind power in Illinois. “We’re also demanding from the company that they give us something better than these dirty old coal plants – like Edison is doing all over California – investing in clean energy jobs,” she said.
McFarlan has previously said that Edison is “helping lead the transition to new energy sources as the sixth largest developer of wind energy projects in the country.”
The Fisk plant, located in the largely Latino Pilsen neighborhood, was first built in 1903, with the current operating unit dating to 1959. The Crawford plant about five miles away in another low-income Latino community, Little Village, was built in 1924 with current units dating to 1958 and 1961.
Together they represent about 850 MW and employee 165 people, three quarters of them union members. These workers had packed Chicago City Council hearings regarding a proposed ordinance that if passed would have forced the plants to convert to natural gas or shut down; a similar state law was also proposed.
“If I had a comment today it is that there are 165 men and women working in those plants today and hundreds who preceded them who are rightfully proud of the role those plants have played in building the city of Chicago,” McFarlan said. “They have been incredibly professional since we announced two months ago that we would be closing their plants. They deserve the thanks and commendation of a city for their dedication and service.”
Local grassroots groups and national organizations including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace had made the plants symbols of environmental justice, since surrounding community members were exposed to higher levels of particulate matter known to exacerbate cardiac problems and asthma and other respiratory problems.
Youth members of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) led visiting journalists and youth groups on “Toxic Tours” by the Crawford station, and in May 2011 members of Greenpeace scaled the stack of the Fisk station and painted “Quit Coal” on it, remaining there for 26 hours.
The local group Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (PERRO) had also for more than a decade pushed for the Fisk plant to close down or install greater pollution controls. LVEJO, PERRO and the Pilsen Alliance are working with Midwest Generation and city officials on a task force to decide what happens to the sites of the two Chicago plants.
“They say it was almost entirely because of fuel and production-related costs, but we feel pretty good that in addition they were facing the costs from continual increased regulation on the state and federal and city levels,” said PERRO co-founder Dorian Breuer about the stepped-up closing dates. “This is incredibly exciting news. We’re all going to breathe easier now, particularly kids with tiny vulnerable lungs and ailing older people.”
Kari Lydersen is a Chicago-based freelancer and author whose work has appeared in The Chicago News Cooperative, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other outlets.
This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
