Conscious Choice: Growing Green Power in Illinois

August 2001

Growing Green Power in Illinois

by Dave Aftandilian

People talk about Florida being the Sunshine State, but did you know that Chicago receives 80 percent as much solar energy as Miami? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, for flat-plate solar systems (such as photovoltaic arrays and solar water heaters), "Illinois has a useful solar resource throughout most of the state." And solar energy is not just plentiful for much of the year in Illinois — particularly during the brightest, hottest summer days, when demand for electricity is highest — it’s also almost completely pollution-free. Aside from pollution emitted during the mining of materials for and the manufacture of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, PV panels emit no global-warming greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and no smog- or acid rain-forming pollutants like nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide while they operate. This means, for instance, that a one-kilowatt PV system can save 150 pounds of coal from being mined and stop 300 pounds of global-warming carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each month, according to the Illinois Solar Energy Association. And, unlike coal, natural gas, or oil, we won’t run out of usable solar energy for millions and millions of years.

So why hasn’t solar energy become our number one power source? Mainly because right now it costs more money to make electricity from PV panels (at non-peak times) than from other sources, and because most people don’t have the opportunity to purchase electricity made from the sun unless they can afford to install their own PV panels at home. In this article, I’ll cover a few of the efforts being made in Illinois to bring the price of solar energy down, and make it available to anyone who wants to buy it, as well as some of the economic development benefits that renewable energy projects can bring to urban and rural areas.

Spire Solar and "Brightfields" in Chicago

Two years ago, Chicago became the first city in the country to host a "Brightfields" project. An innovative program developed by Dan Reicher, former Assistant Secretary for Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Brightfields Initiative brought together various governmental agencies and private businesses in partnerships to rehabilitate contaminated industrial brownfields into productive sites for renewable energy development. In Chicago, the former home of the Sacramento Crushing Corporation at 445 N. Sacramento Blvd. on the city’s west side is being transformed into a new state-of-the-art, energy efficient facility that will house the solar photovoltaic module manufacturer Spire Solar Chicago.

A combination of city, state, and federal tax breaks and other incentives were pooled to make the Spire Solar Brightfields Project possible, creatively facilitated by the DOE. The city and ComEd agreed to help provide a ready market for Spire Solar Chicago’s products, committing up front to purchasing $8 million worth of PV modules. Spire Solar, in turn, agreed to install and service these modules, as well as manufacture them. By the end of June, Spire Solar Chicago will have installed about 160 peak kilowatts of solar energy production capacity on Chicago buildings — or enough to power thirty to thirty-five homes a year, according to Mark Burger of Spire Solar Chicago. So far, the proud Chicago recipients of Spire Solar PV modules have included the Reilly School, ComEd’s North Commercial Center, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the Field Museum, Brentano School, Bouchet School, and the Casa Aztlan Community Center. Spire plans to put up 400 to 500 more peak kilowatts’ worth of PV systems through the end of the year, weather permitting; on the list are at least two more schools, three more museums, one city building, and two housing developments (see "Chicago Institutions Go Solar").

Spire has also been receiving calls from businesses and residences interested in PV systems. "So far," Mr. Burger said, "we’ve had our greatest successes with new construction and extensive rehabs, where solar PV systems can be designed into the construction process." Individuals and businesses can apply for rebates or grants for renewable energy projects through Illinois’ Department of Commerce and Community Affairs; the rebates will fund up to 50 percent of the cost of solar thermal systems, up to a maximum of $5,000, and up to 60 percent of the cost of PV cells and panels, up to $5,000, provided the systems are between 500 watts and two kilowatts in size (see below for contact information). The federal government currently offers a 10 percent investment tax credit to businesses that purchase solar equipment to generate electricity or heat, and there is a proposal in Congress to establish a 15 percent tax credit for individuals, up to $1,000 for solar water heating systems and $2,000 for rooftop photovoltaic systems. (If that sounds good to you, you might want to let your U.S. representative and senators know you support it.)

Spire Solar Chicago should be moving into its new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility on the former Sacramento Blvd. brownfield this September. They’ve been delayed by more than a year, partly because they wanted the building to meet not just Energy Star efficiency standards, but also achieve the highest rating under the U.S. Green Building Council and U.S. EPA’S lead standards, a system ten times more exacting that looks at everything from site selection to building materials to amount of purchases from local suppliers.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Brightfields program "probably won’t continue as such" under the new Bush administration, according to Juli Pollitt of the Chicago Regional Office of the DOE. "But," Ms. Pollitt continued, "the program will continue conceptually. The DOE and its regional offices will look for opportunities to take brownfield redevelopment projects and use those as platforms for getting renewable energy technologies deployed."

ComEd, Renewable Energy, and You

One of the best ways to encourage the growth of renewable energy is for electric utilities to include renewables in their power generation mix. This isn’t just pro bono on the part of the utilities, either — renewables can help utilities meet air pollution standards by reducing their emissions, and can also help diversify their energy source mix, which can provide crucial insurance against the power outages we see in the Chicago region every summer during times of peak demand.

ComEd, which currently provides electricity to most residential customers in northern Illinois, has a number of initiatives in place to help encourage the use of renewable energy. Most of these resulted from the 1997 Illinois electricity deregulation legislation and side agreements. As part of the deregulation package, ComEd agreed to put $225 million into the Illinois Clean Energy Community Trust. The Trust has approved its operating guidelines, but they had not yet been made public at the time of this writing. Hans Detweiler of the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) told me he expects the Trust’s programs to include a mix of renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives, funded on the interest from ComEd’s investment in the Trust rather than the principal. This still amounts to $12 million a year, so it’s far from chump change; stay tuned to Conscious Choice and we’ll let you know as soon as we hear more.

Although other utilities forced the removal of net metering requirements from the Illinois electricity deregulation laws, ComEd stood by its promise to provide net metering, which it’s now calling by the fancier name "The Wind and Photovoltaic Generation Pricing Experiment." You can find out more details from their Web site, or by requesting their "Capture the Power" information packet (see below for contact information), but the basic idea is that ComEd will pay customers who install solar PV or wind electricity generation systems for power the customers feed to the electricity grid from their homes — effectively spinning the electric meter backwards. Not only that, but as an added incentive for signing up with the program, ComEd will pay you an annual participation fee for up to five years (as either a check or a credit on your electric bills).

Another result of electricity deregulation was the formation last July of the Local Government Electric Power Alliance between the City of Chicago and forty-eight suburbs or other agencies. Governments and businesses will be the first to be able to choose their electricity suppliers under the deregulation legislation, and the Alliance banded together to seek better rates on the 400 megawatts of power they needed (one megawatt powers about 1,000 homes). This past June, the city announced that within five years, 120 percent of the power supplied to the Alliance will come from renewable energy sources within Illinois — avoiding annual emissions of 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 1,889 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 1,000 tons of nitrous oxide, the city estimated, as well as providing a market for locally produced renewable energy. And ComEd won the contract to supply that renewable energy.

Jessica Rio of the City of Chicago’s Department of Environment told me that ComEd’s proposal was particularly attractive to the city because ComEd promised to roll part of the "green premium" (slightly higher price, by a fraction of a penny) the city will pay for the renewably generated electricity into a fund to attract other green projects in ComEd’s territory. ComEd, on the other hand, was happy to be able to diversify their mix of power sources. As Larry Leonard, ComEd’s director of energy acquisition, put it, "It’s like your 401(k). There’s less risk [of power outages] with diversification."

In the short term, ComEd will supply the renewable energy mainly through the burning of methane extracted from local landfills, which ComEd has already been utilizing for the past ten years. But in the long term, ComEd is "actively working on diversifying that portfolio, and will incorporate solar and wind into it very soon," according to Gabriella Martin of ComEd’s environmental services department. Solar PV installations are already going in, and are just awaiting certification as "green"; ComEd is also talking with various developers about wind energy projects.

Renewables Power Economic Development

One of the companies ComEd is almost certainly talking to about wind energy projects in Illinois is NEG Micon, one of the top three wind turbine manufacturers in the world. The company has its U.S. offices in Rolling Meadows, and a wind turbine assembly plant in Champaign. Jesper Michaelson of NEG Micon estimates that the company has created 25 direct jobs in Illinois, and perhaps 10 to 15 more indirect jobs (e.g., for suppliers). But if you consider their operations in a regional context, NEG Micon has created several hundred more jobs in the Midwest — for instance, at LM Glasfiber in Grand Forks, North Dakota, which has 100 to 150 people manufacturing rotor blades for NEG Micon at certain times of year, and for DMI Industries, a steel fabricator in Fargo, North Dakota, which has 25 to 50 people working on products for NEG Micon.

In addition to building a demonstration wind turbine in Champaign, NEG Micon is working on a couple of larger wind projects for Illinois, which could be ready for installation by as early as next year; each would produce about 30 to 50 megawatts of clean, efficiently generated power, and yet more jobs for the Midwest. But NEG Micon’s wind turbines are not just generating jobs in manufacturing — they’re also powering economic development in rural areas. Farmers and other landowners who lease their property for siting of wind turbines typically earn upwards of $2,000 per wind turbine per year, depending on the value of the land and its wind resource (how windy it is, and for what length of time; other types of agreements include some form of profit-sharing arrangement, but this tends to be less popular with farmers, because it’s riskier). Each wind turbine takes up from one-eighth to one-quarter of an acre, and landowners can still plant crops or graze animals in between the turbines. "In rural economies, where farming is very volatile," said Mr. Michaelson, "money from wind turbine leases helps stabilize annual income for these families."

On the urban redevelopment front, we’ve already mentioned Spire Solar Chicago and the abandoned brownfield that’s being cleaned up and readied for their PV module manufacturing plant. The Spire project is expected to create fifty to sixty direct jobs, and one hundred total when you include indirect jobs such as construction and installation. Better still, almost all these jobs will be created and will remain right here in the Chicago area; "this is one reason renewables create more jobs than fossil fuels — because they’re capital-intensive rather than fuel-intensive," as ELPC’s Detweiler puts it. That job count makes Spire Solar Chicago "the biggest renewable energy success story in Illinois," according to Lauren Sharfman of the Midwest Global Warming Leadership Council.

Spire Solar Chicago will also be supplying the PV modules for yet another brownfield redevelopment project in Chicago — the rehabilitation of the abandoned Cluster Sites near the Paxton landfill in the Lake Calumet region. If all goes as planned, the site will house the largest solar power generating site in the nation, with a peak generating capacity of 2.5 megawatts, as well as a plant to extract methane from the adjacent landfill. The project is part of a joint city and state redevelopment plan for the region that was announced last year. ComEd has committed to investing at least $3 million in the energy generating facility, and the City has promised to purchase power from it.

Gabriella Martin of ComEd said the company had hoped to break ground on the site later this year, and install 500 kilowatts of generating capacity a year after that, but the project has been delayed because the site turned out to be more contaminated than anticipated. Another problem, according to Rio, is that the city has to acquire the land in the form of many small, tax-delinquent parcels, which requires contacting a number of different landowners. But, delays notwithstanding, sooner or later the project will go ahead, and a site formerly renowned for the amount of toxic wastes dumped on it will get a new reputation as the Chicago area’s newest clean, green, power generating station.

What You Can Do

First off, if you’re building a new house or extensively rehabbing your current one, consider putting in a solar PV system. The system will more than pay for itself over time, and you’ll also be eligible for state (and possibly federal) rebates and incentives for going solar, as well as ComEd’s "Wind and Photovoltaic Generation Pricing Experiment." If you use a lot of water, or work for a company that does, you can also look into solar thermal water heaters (see "Solar Thermal Heats Up").

You can also help support green power even if your immediate future doesn’t hold major home construction. Beginning in May, 2002, all Illinois residents will have the chance to choose their own electricity supplier. Each supplier will be required to tell you what sources they use to generate their power, and you can then choose a company that offers the highest percentages of solar and wind-produced power. You’ll probably pay a couple pennies more per kilowatt hour, but you’ll be making the air easier to breathe for everyone by reducing power plant pollution, as well as helping provide a market to stimulate the growth of renewable energy. You might also want to write your elected officials and ask them to support rebates, incentives, and research funds for renewable energy.

Finally, if you’re a fan of solar energy in Illinois, you might want to join the Illinois Solar Energy Association, whose "goal is to provide energy education and promote the application of solar and renewable energy technologies." You can get in touch with ISEA through the information below.

Resources

City of Chicago Department of Environment, 312-744-7606

ComEd, 630-576-6783 (Denise Bechen, Pricing Experiment Program Manager)

Environmental Law and Policy Center, 312-673-6500

Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, 217-557-1925

Illinois Solar Energy Association, 630-420-1118

NEG Micon, 847-806-9500

Spire Solar Chicago, 312-829-8200

U.S. Department of Energy, 312-886-8586 (Chicago Office)

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