LISLE, Ill. – For the holiday season, Durham School Services’ team members have once again demonstrated their continued commitment to giving back to their communities. Team members from across the country participated in various community events such as holiday food drives, fundraisers, clothing and toy drives, school bus donations, providing complimentary transportation, holiday parades, volunteering at food banks, and more.
These community outreach efforts are carried out as part of the Company’s community outreach program, Partners Beyond the Bus, which aims to raise and increase awareness of and recognize the volunteer efforts of our teams and strengthen ties with our customers and community partners.
A few highlights from the holiday season include:
Little Egg Harbor, NJ – Hosted their annual food drive to provide ten families from four different school districts with a delicious and generous variety of food for the upcoming holiday.
Hutchinson, KS – Together with their partner, Salty Cycles, collected over $5,000 in cash and toys in addition to bicycle donations for the Annual Reno County Toy Run.
California, MO – Participated in the community’s Tipton Christmas Parade and won first place with their spectacular and realistic-looking Grinch themed bus.
Grayslake, IL – Donated transportation to the Great Lakes Naval Station in North Chicago, IL to transport over 100 cadets to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 4600.
Jacksonville, FL – Hosted a toy drive for community partner and donated six buses for National Wreaths Across America Day to transport volunteers to and from the Jacksonville National Cemetery where volunteers placed wreaths to honor and remember fallen soldiers.
San Bernardino, CA – Donated a school bus to the All-American Boys Chorus to transport the choir to and from their regular and holiday season concerts and field trips.
“I can’t praise our team members enough for their unmatched generosity and commitment to their communities year-round particularly during the holidays when it can be especially meaningful to so many,” said Tim Wertner, CEO of Student Transportation, National Express. “It is a great honor to work amongst such giving, selfless community heroes who constantly lead by example. As a result of their example, I find myself also learning from their good deeds and actions. Thank you again to all our team members for their dedication to living the Company’s values every day and supporting their communities.”
About Durham School Services: As an industry-leading student transportation provider, Durham School Services is dedicated to the safety of our students and People. For more than 100 years, we have been committed to Excellence and upholding our mission of getting students to school safely, on time, and ready to learn. Through this mission and a grassroots approach to our operations, Durham School Services has earned recognition as a trusted transportation provider among our Customers and the Communities we serve.
Two community-based geothermal pilot projects, each led by equity-focused nonprofits, have advanced to the second phase of funding through a U.S. Department of Energy program.
Blacks in Green, a community organization based in Chicago, and Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting an equitable transition to clean energy, were included last week in a set of five projects across the country that have been awarded a total of more than $35 million from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office to implement geothermal installations.
The five project teams advancing to the next phase of the DOE project were among a cohort of 11 projects participating in the initial phase of the program, where coalitions selected project sites, assessed geothermal resource and permitting needs, conducted feasibility analysis and local engagement, and identified workforce and training needs. The selected projects’ range of sizes, technologies, and innovations will provide potential templates for other communities considering implementing geothermal systems.
Three of the five projects are located in urban or suburban areas; two are in rural communities. The other three recipients are the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the University of Oklahoma, for a project in the town of Shawnee; and GTI Energy, for a project in Hinesburg, Vermont.
Tapping into Chicago’s alleys
Blacks in Green, located in West Woodlawn, a predominantly Black community on Chicago’s South Side, serves as the lead for a coalition which was awarded $9.9 million for its Sustainable Chicago Geothermal pilot. Other coalition partners are the City of Chicago, University of Illinois, The Accelerate Group, Citizens Utility Board, Climate Jobs Illinois, dbHMS, GeoExchange, and Illinois AFL-CIO.
The pilot, also located in West Woodlawn, utilizes alleys to circumvent the need for vast open plots for subterranean loop fields that form the heart of a geothermal array. Locating the bulk of geothermal loop lines in alleyways also sidesteps the underground congestion of existing utility infrastructure typically located underneath city streets.
It’s among an assortment of elements in the Sustainable Square Mile approach that advances BIG’s vision for energy justice through clean energy and microgrid/VPP systems owned and managed by the community, said Naomi Davis, BIG’s founder and CEO.
“BIG launched in 2007 with a goal of increasing household income and community resilience against the harms of climate crisis at neighborhood scale using the new green economy — so we’re grateful for this chance to make it manifest,” Davis said in a news release.
Along with installation of the needed infrastructure within the multiblock footprint, year two of the West Woodlawn project will focus on community outreach and job programs. Once construction is complete, the geothermal system will provide heating and cooling, not to mention lower utility bills, for potentially more than 200 households.
“The Sustainable Chicago Geothermal project will be a transformational investment in the West Woodlawn community. The effort to eliminate harmful emissions from homes and businesses, while lowering energy burden, has proven to be a community-wide challenge, and requires a community-wide solution,” said Andrew Barbeau, president of The Accelerate Group and principal investigator of the Blacks in Green project, in a news release.
The need to reconstruct the alleyways after installation of the geothermal array also presents the opportunity to replace asphalt or concrete with permeable pavers. This would work to promote climate resiliency through mitigation of urban flooding, a persistent occurrence in many of Chicago’s South and West Side communities, said Nuri Madina, the director of Sustainable Square Mile, who serves as point person for the pilot.
“All of our programs are designed to create multiple benefits,” Madina told the Energy News Network in September.
A first-of-its kind project in suburban Boston
Home Energy Efficiency Team, commonly referred to by the acronym HEET, in partnership with Eversource Energy; the city of Framingham, Massachusetts; and engineering consultant Salas O’Brien; was awarded $7.8 million toward construction of a utility-based,community-scale geothermal system.
“We are honored to receive this funding from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office as part of the Community Geothermal Heating and Cooling initiative, and to show how geothermal energy networks can be interconnected to increase efficiency, build resilience, and decarbonize at the scale and speed we need to achieve our climate goals,” said Zeyneb Magavi, executive director for HEET, in a news release.
The proposed plans by HEET and its partners would connect to the first Framingham geothermal network, which was commissioned earlier this year. Once approved by the state Department of Public Utilities and upon completion, it would represent the first utility-owned community geothermal network to connect to an adjacent operational loop, establishing guidelines for the interconnection and growth of geothermal networks.
“This innovative project not only showcases Framingham’s commitment to sustainable energy solutions but also sets a precedent for other communities across the nation. By harnessing the natural heat from the earth, we are taking a significant step towards reducing our carbon footprint and promoting renewable energy sources. Our collaboration with HEET and Eversource exemplifies the power of partnerships in driving forward clean energy initiatives,” said Framingham Mayor Charlie Sisitsky in a news release.
“So instead of feeding natural gas into these buildings, we could feed geothermal water,” Magavi said. “And then we could meter that and sell that. It’s no different than when you pay your water bill.”
School bus drivers in Bourbonnais, Illinois, will be able to earn up to $700 in bonuses for working the day before and after both a holiday in Bourbonnais Elementary School District, reported Daily Journal.
According to the news report, the Bourbonnais School Board unanimously approved a new bonus system on Aug. 20, to incentivize attendance around the holidays for bus drivers.
Transportation Director Scott Austin said the district sees a sharp uptick in drivers calling off work before and after holidays and breaks.
The district reportedly employs 18 bus drivers for its approximately 130 daily bus routes, but it could use four or five additional flexible drivers to help cover routes when others call in sick.
Austin reportedly said that over the last two years, the call-offs the day before and after the holiday increased more than 87 percent. With the news bonus system, the district will be eliminating its annual $250 bonus for drivers who miss 10 or few days per year; this was given to 14 drivers last year.
According to the article, drivers will now be able to earn a $100 bonus for each holiday when they work both the day before and the day after, for a possible total of $700. Additionally, drivers can also still receive $100 quarterly bonuses for perfect attendance.
The districts drivers will reportedly make $26 per hour this year. The seven holidays for te bonuses will include Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day and Memorial Day.
For the extended Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, drivers who work the day before and the day after the school break receive the bonus. Austin said via the article that the desired outcome is to eliminate staffing complications for the transportation department, which is “in the same boat” as many other districts struggling to maintain a full staff of bus drivers.
“What did you do differently, and how did you do it?” This was the question asked of Diana Mikelski, director of transportation for District 211 in Illinois, after she transported students with special needs to school in a propane-powered school bus rather than a diesel one. During the Friday session, sponsored by Blue Bird and the Propane Education & Research Council, she shared that educators were impressed with how calm, quiet and ready to learn the students were when they arrived at school.
She shared that her drivers also benefit from the cleaner air when loading and unloading students. Furthermore, both drivers and aides can hear and speak to students onboard without shouting. When the special needs propane bus was replaced with a diesel one during repairs, a parent noted that his child much preferred the quieter propane.
Steven Whaley, a Blue Bird alternative fuels manager, noted that noise and temperature considerations may be part of some students’ Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Mikelski confirmed that both aspects could be much better managed on a propane bus.
In addition to students on special needs routes, those on general education routes also profit from the quiet, clean propane buses, Mikelski added. “I’m glad they can all enjoy these benefits,” she said.
“It’s also helping staff as well,” she said. Now her drivers prefer driving the propane buses, with some noticing fewer health symptoms. The rumbling noises and fuel smells are missing with propane buses as well, leading to community approval.
Mikelski said she had good buy-in with her mechanics due to all the work involved with diesel buses. “It’s a learning curve but once they knew it, they loved it,” she declared. The district doesn’t go through parts as fast and her budget has improved, she shared.
“We are constantly saving with propane,” she said.
Implementing Propane
Whaley reviewed Blue Bird’s current offerings of diesel, gasoline, propane and electric school buses as well as how they measure up to the continuously tightening California Air Resources Board and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards.
For those districts that may struggle with electrification, he proposed propane solutions as that fuel is safe, clean, easily accessible and good in cold weather. He shared stats from Anthony Jackson, transportation director for Bibb County School District in Georgia, showing that propane is about the same as diesel in cost per mile.
Tom Hopkins, business development manager for Blue Bird energy partner ROUSH CleanTech, explained that despite the current abundance of EV funding, districts should consider whether they can acquire, run, and train staff to operate those buses if said funding should wane.
Considering everything required of a school bus operation, Hopkins said that propane provided a relatively easy and cost-effective option to swap to. He noted that propane buses are about half as noisy as diesel buses, providing a “cleaner, healthier, safer ride to school.”
Brian Raygor, national autogas business manager for propane provider Ferrellgas, addressed the scalability of propane autogas refueling infrastructure. There are permanent, temporary and mobile configurations.
He reviewed some options that the School District of Philadelphia had taken advantage of when it added 38 propane-powered school buses to its fleet on October 24.
“We can build the stations to meet your needs,” he declared.
Regarding contingencies, Raygor reviewed a rapid repair and mobile fueling solution that was put in place to assist Kansas City Schools when a school bus propane pump went down. Whaley advised districts to utilize the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator so they will have fuel when needed.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to finalize more than $200 million in grant funding in the coming weeks to accelerate the clean energy transition at three Great Lakes shipping ports.
The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority, and the Illinois International Port District were each selected for grants last month under the Biden administration’s Clean Ports Program.
The U.S. EPA said it intends to finalize grant agreements by December or January. That action will obligate the federal government to pay roughly $3 billion in grants under the program, even if President-elect Donald Trump or the next Congress tries to repeal or block further action under the Inflation Reduction Act.
The $94 million grant announced for the Cleveland port is the largest it has ever received and will help it build on work that’s already underway to electrify and decarbonize its infrastructure.
“It puts us at the forefront of decarbonization,” said William Friedman, president and chief executive officer of Cleveland’s port authority. “Now we’ll be able to start figuring out what’s the phase-in and then how do we move forward with the next round.”
The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority will get approximately $25 million for solar panels, charging infrastructure and electric cargo handling equipment, and another $95 million will go to the Illinois EPA for solar, battery storage and hydrogen-related investments at the Illinois International Port District serving greater Chicago.
The largest share of grants will go to ports along the East and West coasts. “But the program is also intended to set the foundation for transitioning the entire port industry to zero emissions,” said Jennifer Macedonia, a deputy assistant administrator for U.S. EPA. “And there are important communities around many of our inland ports as well.”
The shipping industry accounts for roughly 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. While the bulk of that is from ships themselves, port operations typically rely on diesel power for most of their energy. And ships often burn fuel to power equipment even while they’re in port.
The EPA’s review process included ensuring that selected projects can achieve or exceed goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as other pollution that can affect nearby communities, said U.S. EPA Administrator Michael Regan. Those criteria air pollutants are ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.
The work is especially important for Ohio, which has lagged other Midwest states and regions in deploying strategies to reduce greenhouse gases, said Valerie Katz, deputy director for Cuyahoga Green Energy. “Our regional decarbonization efforts will reduce environmental exposure to toxic air pollutants for downstream Ohio communities.”
Funding for the Port of Cleveland will encompass work for electric cargo-handling equipment and vessels that serve the port, along with solar generation and battery storage, charging infrastructure and shore power for vessels. Project partners include Logistec USA, the commercial operator for day-to-day operations, as well as the Great Lakes Towing Company, which will build two electric tug boats.
Decarbonization is a “competitive advantage that will attract more shipping volume to our port,” said Baiju Shah, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “Companies are striving to reduce their environmental footprints through their operations and value chains,” including Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. “In addition, electrifying the port operations supports our region’s clean air efforts.”
That’s especially important given the port’s location near the downtown lakefront and riverfront areas, Shah said. Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River are the focus for several waterfront development projects aimed at drawing more business and visitors to Cleveland.
Funding for the Port of Detroit will go toward electric cargo-handling equipment, some vessels and railcar movers, along with charging infrastructure and solar generation. Part of the money also will be used to develop a roadmap for adding EV and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority is part of the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, or MachH2, which was selected last year for $1 billion in Department of Energy funding for a hydrogen hub.
Funding for the Illinois International Port District will cover a variety of projects for its three ports, including hydrogen fueling infrastructure, solar energy and battery storage, and hydrogen and electric cargo handling equipment. Hydrogen and electric locomotives also are on EPA’s program selections list. The Illinois EPA is the lead partner for the grant work.
Like its counterpart in Cleveland, the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority had already begun working on plans to move to cleaner energy sources for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. But zero-emissions equipment to move cargo is new in the U.S. shipping industry and is still generally more expensive than fossil-fueled counterparts.
“What’s great about the EPA grant is that it helps these businesses make the decision to choose this cleaner technology,” said Mark Schrupp, executive director for the Detroit port authority. Over time, costs for such equipment should come down, but the grants will help launch market growth.
Various projects among the 55 selected for grants last month have planning components and provisions for community engagement or workforce development. Planning work on emissions inventories can position other ports to move ahead with clean energy in the future, Macedonia said.
The U.S. EPA plans to move ahead swiftly to finalize grant agreements, which will have the effect of protecting the funds from a possible clawback under Trump or the next Congress.
“We will be awarding the grants in December of 2024 and January of 2025… so that money will be obligated on or before the end of this administration,” Regan said. Depending on the projects, implementation will occur over the next three to four years.
In Cleveland, that means a big chunk of work under the new grant will be taking place even as renovation of the Port of Cleveland’s Warehouse A and electrical work take place under its current projects.
“We’ll have to throw a lot here at the engineers and construction project management people to figure this out,” Friedman said. Yet the timing means it will be that much sooner for the port to move to zero emissions for its own operations.
When farmer Trent Gerlach found out a solar farm would be built on the land he had long worked in northwestern Illinois, he was disappointed.
“As a farmer, seeing that land taken out of production is difficult, when you farmed it for many years, you’ve been stewards to that land, fertilized that land, taken care of it as if it was your own,” he said.
Gerlach’s family had been raising corn, soybeans and livestock since 1968, and like many farmers, they leased farmland in addition to working their own land. And when the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.
“The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal,” he said.
But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.
Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.
“We don’t own the land, we don’t get a say — that’s landowners’ rights, and I’m very pro that,” Gerlach recounted. “In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying, ‘that’s how we’ve always done it so that’s what we’re going to do.’ Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you’re for or against it, it’s coming, it’s what’s happening. As an agriculture producer, we’re going to adapt with it.”
Acciona regional manager Kyle Charpie said that sheep grazing appears an especially promising form of agrivoltaics, and one that the company is likely to continue exploring globally. Solar operators need to keep vegetation controlled, and sheep are a more effective and ecological way to do it than mechanized mowing. Acciona has long had a sheep agrivoltaic operation in Portugal, Charpie noted, and two projects in Texas are underway.
“It’s incredibly cost-effective — sheep don’t break down like a tractor; if a tractor blows a belt, you’ve lost a whole day of cutting,” he said. “These grasses grow wickedly fast, it’s that constant presence of the sheep that’s been super super effective. It aligns with our sustainability goals.”
“It’s tough to say we’re the greatest renewable company in the world [if] we have a bunch of tractors running up and down our fields belching out CO2,” he continued.
Another advantage, Charpie said, is that at the end of the solar array’s lifespan, the land beneath it will be restored and refreshed.
“We have all these sheep now who will spend 30-plus years breathing, living, using their hooves to churn up ground, even dying; it’s the circle of life,” he said. “When these farms get turned back to the families, that soil condition will be wonderful.”
‘He saw an opportunity here’
Gerlach’s family had about 50 ewes when the idea for grazing around the solar panels struck. He “hounded” Acciona, in Charpie’s words, to bring an agrivoltaic deal to fruition.
“He saw an opportunity here, and he has been his own best advocate, banging down the door, checking how close are we, when will we get our sheep here,” Charpie said.
Gerlach ultimately bought about 500 sheep of two types: Dorper and Katahdin, small breeds that can fit easily under solar panels.
“The panels create lots of shade — during the heat of the day, they’ll all be underneath the panels for shade,” Gerlach said. “In early mornings, late evenings they’re out grazing aggressively. They don’t bother the panels one bit.”
“We’re stewards of the land, we want healthy ground and livestock. That can marry in fine with clean energy,” says farmer Trent Gerlach. Credit: Acciona
Gerlach said his family “used to raise livestock like everybody did back in the day,” and his farm has won awards for its cattle, but raising livestock has become less profitable in recent years. Agrivoltaics offer an opportunity to delve back into raising sheep, something Gerlach loves. A commercial sheep operation would only be possible with the payments for vegetation management, he said.
“Raising sheep in the United States is challenging because the market for sheep is not very high,” he said. There’s not much of a domestic wool market, and “the meat side of sheep and lamb never really caught on in the U.S. — we’re a beef, pork, poultry-consuming country.”
Gerlach sells the bulk of his lambs around the Easter season, and largely for kosher and halal consumption. Since that market is so limited, the ewes largely earn their keep being paid to graze.
“We love providing stewardship to the animals. That’s what U.S. agriculture was built on hundreds of years ago,” Gerlach said. “It marries really well with our crop production” on nearby land. “In agriculture you need diversification. By bringing sheep and livestock production in, we can afford to hire more full-time employees.”
Sheep are the livestock best suited to agrivoltaics, stakeholders agree.
“You can’t use cattle because they’re too large, they would rub on the panels and break them,” Gerlach said. “You can’t use goats because goats would climb on the panels, and they’re natural chewers, they would chew on the wires.”
The High Point solar array is divided up into separate plots with fences, “like perfect little pens for the sheep,” added Charpie.
In a bigger uninterrupted plot, a farmer would likely need to move water sources for sheep strategically around the area to make sure the animals cover the entire plot. Gerlach’s flock only grazes about a fifth of the Acciona solar array. He’s hoping to expand, though feeding and sheltering sheep during the winter when they can’t graze is costly.
“I’ve got three young kids. Hopefully we raise them in agriculture. It’s such a good practice for our young people to learn responsibility and stewardship,” Gerlach said.
“[The animals] come first, they get fed and watered and taken care of before us. Sometimes agriculture gets portrayed in a poor light, especially larger production agriculture. I try to really push that that’s not everybody. Talk to a local farmer, a local person — you generally see that we’re stewards of the land, we want healthy ground and livestock. That can marry in fine with clean energy.”
A newly published study examining property values near dozens of large Midwest solar farms has found no significant negative impact — and even a slight positive effect — from the projects, according to the data.
Loyola University researcher Gilbert Michaud has attended scores of community meetings about proposed solar projects across the Midwest. In past research, he quantified that property values were the most common concern brought up in local hearings about proposed utility-scale solar.
And while solar arrays may have an aesthetic impact, property values are influenced by a wide range of other factors, such as the quality of schools and the local economy.
“I’ve observed a lot of the negative comments framed as ‘I think’ or ‘I saw something on social media,’” said Michaud, an assistant professor of environmental policy at the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. So he sought to “elevate the discussion from ‘I think, I think, I think,’” by injecting it with some hard data.
His latest study, published in the December 2024 issue of the journal Solar Compass, looked at property values surrounding 70 utility-scale solar projects in the Midwest and found they actually had a minor positive effect — increasing values 0.5% to 2%.
“While the impact itself — of a few thousand dollars — might not be incredibly meaningful,” said Michaud, “clearly these projects drive economic development in rural communities, through jobs, tax contributions, etcetera, which in turn increase residential property values.”
Emotions running high
Michael Wildermuth, a landowner in Allen County, Ohio, was glad to hear about the proposed 300 MW Birch Solar farm, since he supports clean energy and welcomed the economic benefits. Wildermuth cofounded an organization, Allen Auglaize Coalition for Reasonable Energy (named for the two counties where the project would be sited), to advocate for the project as it faced local opposition.
“The nearest neighbors became enraged so quickly and voiced their rage so loudly that others were placed in a reactionary mode,” Wildermuth said. “The neighbors were greatly concerned with property values and flooding. The landowners were afraid of these vocal neighbors, the public officials were afraid of being on the wrong side of a political ‘hot potato’ issue.”
The developer appealed to the Ohio State Supreme Court, and Allen Auglaize Coalition for Reasonable Energy filed an amicus brief in support of the solar farm. Wildermuth wishes more data about property values had been available during the debate. He also thinks opponents ignored the $81 million the developer estimated it would contribute to the economy, with local officials saying the project would have little local economic benefit since the power would go to an Amazon facility.
“Just get people ‘all het up’ and you don’t have to deal with reason and facts,” Wildermuth said.
“Do I think solar farms could actually improve property values or the financial well-being of landowners and neighbors of solar farms? Yes, I do. We argued that. We also pointed out that, in the rural area where the farm was planned, the properties would remain stable for 30 years,” preventing them from being developed for other purposes that neighbors may find less desirable.
Shining new light
The study, co-authored by Loyola graduate Sampson Hao, notes that the benefits of rooftop solar on energy bills and property values are well-documented. But less is known about how utility-scale solar farms impact nearby properties — even though utility-scale solar accounts for about three-quarters of new solar development.
The study reviewed 70 solar farms built in the Midwest between 2009 and 2022, from a database by Berkeley Laboratory including solar farms over 5 MW. Hao and Michaud analyzed property values compiled by real estate firm Zillow, comparing values five years before a solar project became operational, with values at the operational date, which is often about two years after construction starts.
They aggregated by zip code, and controlled for factors like the COVID-19 pandemic that could affect housing values in a given year. Three-bedroom houses were used as a measure of overall property values. They also analyzed “control group” zip codes near the solar farm zip codes, but without solar farms, to account for other factors that might affect property values.
Michaud noted that while the number of bedrooms and other factors have a much larger impact on property values, the small positive impact that nearby solar farms could have could be similar to that of cultural amenities, like arts centers. Solar farms can also have an impact on schools — a major factor in determining property values — since solar projects augment local tax bases. Solar developers also often make ongoing contributions to school districts in the form of donations, supplies and energy education opportunities.
The study showed high numbers of solar farms going online in 2017 and 2021, with a smaller spike in 2020.
The projects included in the study range from a 10 MW urban installation in Chicago, installed by Exelon in 2010, to the 268 MW Riverstart Solar Park in Indiana, from 2021. Only 11 of the 70 projects studied were over 100 MW in capacity. Indiana had the most arrays at 22, followed by 14 in Minnesota, eight in Michigan and seven in Illinois.
The most beneficial impact on property values was from solar farms between 5 and 20 MW in size, perhaps in part because these can be hidden by vegetative buffers.
“The paper is not about a house that’s 200 feet away from a solar project, that’s very rarely the case,” said Hao, noting that developers often offer to buy properties at above market value in such situations. “We wanted to look at a bigger scale. A project between 5 and 20 MW, you’re really not supposed to even see these with your bare eyes.”
Midwestern focus
Michaud said that debunking myths around solar farms is particularly important in the Midwest, where there is much untapped potential for solar. While it has less sun than the Southeast and California, which have led the nation in solar farm development, the Midwest has massive stretches of agricultural land where solar can be deployed along with crops.
“This is a really important finding for Midwestern government officials, land owners, and many others to know about,” Michaud said. “Many of these folks are now making decisions about whether to host a large-scale solar project in their community, and the potential impacts to property values is often something that comes up in local debates and at local hearings. Data can help tell a story and move the debate beyond anecdotal or subjective arguments.”
The Loyola study cites a 2018 analysis of 956 specific solar farms by a University of Texas researcher that found no conclusive evidence of impact on property values one way or another. The Loyola researchers also noted a study by Berkeley Laboratory that found about a 1% decline in property values around 2,000 solar farms in six states on the east and west coasts and in Minnesota.
“Most Midwestern states have 10 to 20 gigawatts of potential utility-scale solar in their queue, and developers are coming off of the coasts where the grid is more congested and there is less land for development, targeting agricultural land in the center of the country,” Michaud said. “Finding a large plot of land with good solar irradiation and access to a substation is the sweet spot for a lot of solar developers, and in essence, positive attributes of farming crops in the Midwest are also positive attributes for farming ground-mounted, large-scale solar.”
Perception becomes reality
The study notes the irony that perception plays a significant role in determining property values, and fears about property value declines can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Projection and speculation drive market forces,” Michaud said. “A farmer might be angry that a solar farm is going in the community, he’s going to sell and move to Florida. A buyer thinks, ‘maybe I can negotiate this price down,’ and the house sells for less than its value, and an appraiser looks at that. But none of this is real, it’s just based on speculation and emotion, which then drives data points … it all started with an emotional response.”
Hao theorized that developers who make poor choices in siting and managing solar farms can have an impact on property values elsewhere, if negative stories about solar spread by word of mouth or social media.
“Is a developer doing their best to have as much of a buffer as economically feasible?” he asked. “Is the developer making vegetative screenings so you’re not going to see millions of panels? Is the developer doing their best to move the inverter to the center of the leased land so noise doesn’t get over the road? There’s a lot of things at the end of the day that developers can do better. It’s up to the developers to really step up their game to eliminate those potential negative effects.”
The Loyola study notes that solar developers often do things like hosting county fairs or supporting local organizations that can increase property values. Michaud said it’s possible such dynamics were reflected in their data showing small increases in property values, along with other benefits.
“From an economic perspective,” Michaud said, “locals should increasingly look at these data to understand the job opportunities, wages paid, new tax revenues and negligible or positive impacts on property values, and realize that large-scale solar projects might actually be an amenity in their community.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Michael Wildermuth planned to lease land for the Birch solar project, and that he personally filed an amicus brief in the case. The story has also been updated to clarify the scope of Gilbert Michaud’s research.
Increased activity in the solar energy space has generated the need for more trained and skilled workers. At the same time, disinvested populations are often shut out of these jobs.
For people who have spent time in prison, it’s even harder to catch a break.
The Renewing Sovereignty Project — or RSP, based in Chicago — seeks to address both circumstances, not just with job training, but also financial and social support designed to lend substance to the phrase “returning citizen.”
RSP draws seed funding from community solar developer Cultivate Power, which has pledged six years of financial support. Trainees are recruited through the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism, a collection of more than 70 grassroots organizations across the city working to achieve social change.
Instruction is provided by training partner 548 Foundation, while job placement is achieved through multiple hiring partners, including Knobelsdorff Energy.
RSP also provides referrals for possible sealing or expungement of past convictions, which can ease the transition process for eligible participants, according to Jacqueline Williams, Regional and Prison Program Director for Zealous, a social support organization that functions as a primary administrator for RSP.
Opportunities created by the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, or CEJA, earned high praise from Williams, who is determined to ensure those investments yield results.
“The worst thing that we can think of is that all of this money gets poured into these training programs … and then none of [the participants] actually get jobs in the solar field,” Williams said.
RSP participants work with Mike Huneke, Director of Energy for Knobelsdorff Electric, at a solar array in Saukville, Wisconsin. Credit: Jacqueline Williams (used with permission)
For instance, Mt. Tamalpais College, housed within San Quentin Prison, allows enrolled inmates to earn an associate’s degree transferable to four-year institutions. Each student receives an individual education plan — including intensive tutoring. Only 5% of its graduates ever return to prison.
Likewise, on average 96% of those who complete the JUMPSTART Prison Ministry program, currently active in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio will never return to prison. This peer-led program works with individuals while they are incarcerated as well as after their release.
Specifically, the NIJ report emphasizes that a holistic approach to reentry employment training programs — like RSP — is essential to maximize the chances of a justice-impacted individual actually getting hired.
Williams said that often includes addressing fundamental needs like housing, food, child care and transportation.
“Anything that you can think of that would prevent someone from being successful in a really intensive 13-week program, we’re going to assess that barrier and we’re going to provide it. And those needs do change throughout the course of 13 weeks. And so we’ll be responsive pretty much immediately to those changing needs,” Williams said.
RSP’s results track with the findings of the NIJ report, and justify its intensive wraparound services. According to the RSP website. the first cohort of 12, which completed the program in 2023, achieved a 100% placement rate in solar and related industries. The current cohort of 18 graduates is on a pace to achieve similar levels of success, Williams said.
“There are a lot of workforce training programs. We didn’t need to add another training program. What we needed to add was the intensive wraparound services and the barrier mitigation and the alumni support that really allows people to go from truly one completely different aspect of their life to through this training and into a long-term career in green energy,” Williams said.
From left: Chris Washington, Shaquan Jones, and Caprice Gullens at the graduation of Renewing Sovereignty Project’s first graduation ceremony. All three are currently employed in the solar industry. Credit: Jacqueline Williams (used with permission)
Doing well by doing good
Cultivate Power has committed $1.75 million over six years to support RSP, while also furthering their own mission of developing a more inclusive solar workforce in Illinois. Over the past two years, Cultivate Power has funded more than $500,000 in support of the current cohort of 18 graduates and the previous cohort of 12 graduates.
Noah Hyte, managing director and co-founder of Cultivate Power, said the partnership with RSP is “one of the bigger commitments we’ve made” toward community initiatives.
“We’re in a situation broadly as an industry in Illinois where there’s simply not enough labor and construction companies to meet the demand associated with CEJA’s goals,” he said. “The state’s doing an excellent job of providing tens of millions of dollars of funding to workforce development programs to create workforce development hubs. And so we didn’t see a problem writ large with the scaling of workforce development. [Instead] we saw an opportunity for this specific group of people, and this specific profile that needed additional support, that needed a more thoughtful and wraparound approach to ensure that they would be as successful as possible in this endeavor.”
Along with funding, Hyte and fellow managing director and co-founder Brian Matthay lend their business know-how in advising the administration of RSP, while leaving the work of providing training and support services to 548 Foundation and Zealous, Hyte said.
Inclusive vetting
Programs like JUMPSTART, Mt. Tamalpais College — and RSP — operate on the principle that justice-impacted individuals are not throw-away beings. This recognition extends to the intensive selection and preparation process for prospective cohort members that takes place before they are assigned to a training program.
The vetting process performed by organizations within the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism focuses on developing candidates so that they are prepared to draw the most benefit from the training.
“We get each one of our individuals as a referral,” Williams said. “They have to be a part of a community organization. And the reason for that is it really provides another layer of support and another layer of safety net for individuals, most of whom are system impacted. The vast majority of our individuals are involved with the criminal justice system in some way or have been to foster care.
“They go through the whole year of the program where they work on conflict resolution and personal readiness and violence prevention and all those things before they enter the workforce space. Each organization has that same model. So by the time they get to us, they are more ready,” Williams said.
RSP also imposes a strict attendance requirement — which reflects expectations that trainees will face on the job. However, commitment to the wraparound approach often makes the difference between a candidate dropping out — or finishing the program and obtaining a good job.
“If somebody hasn’t shown up three days in a row, we’re not just going to kick them out of the program. We’re going to send somebody to your house, probably somebody from your coalition partner and see if you’re okay. We’re trying to find out the whys and not be punitive and recreate the same systems that we are trying to overturn. We really bring people that support right to their door.
“You can have the best intentions in the world, but if the lights are out at home and the refrigerator is not running and you’re not able to feed the kids, you’re not going to be able to complete that program,” Williams said.
RSP participants take measurements on a rooftop. Credit: Robert Wallace (used with permission)
Getting job-ready
Candidates referred to 548 Foundation for workforce training must meet two specific requirements: the ability to lift 40 pounds and read at an eighth-grade level. Beyond that, actual workforce training involves more than specific job-related task instruction, said 548 Foundation founder and CEO AJ Patton.
“They’re intentional about picking folks from the toughest situations, not just, oh, kid just graduated, doesn’t know what he wants to do in his life. No, they’re talking, ‘You just came home from prison. You’re in a tough situation. Here’s your chance. We’re going to put our arms around you.’
“We spend the first two weeks of class talking about professional development and human development, conflict resolution, how to be a professional, how you present yourself and how to communicate on a job site. Those things matter way more before I ever teach you how to install a solar system,” Patton said.
This preliminary instruction reflects a recognition of the lived experience of training cohort members.
“We know in the streets how you address those things. There’s a very clear protocol. You call me out my name, this is what you get. But on the job site it’s different. We’re professionals now. There’s a kind of recalibration of how we engage one another and how we engage our contemporaries and colleagues,” Patton said.
That being said, frequently, it’s the “hard timers” who perform the best during training and in the job market, Patton said.
“People want to work. If you’re willing to show up on time and commit to the effort and the cost, then there’s a marketplace for you… That particular subset of the community has been the group that’s probably been the most focused in the classroom. They’ve been the most attentive. They know what this opportunity means. They’ve been working hard. And they are almost overwhelmed at graduation when there’s a bidding war for their efforts… I’ve had guys that spent 17 years in prison come to my program, and at the end of the program, they had three job offers,” Patton said.
Ongoing wraparound support
The individualized, specialized guidance and support each participant receives continues for a full year beyond formal graduation. Drawn from what the program calls an alumni fund, such assistance can be anything from a down payment for a reliable car to get back and forth to work, referrals and resources for child care or providing funds for required tools and clothing, Williams said.
“Anything can really knock you for a loop. I mean, somebody hit a coyote the other day and blew out their radiator, and we just immediately got the radiator fixed so they wouldn’t miss a day of work. It’s those sorts of [situations] that can just totally derail a person that we try to just mitigate by providing access to that fund as well as mentorship,” Williams said.
Sometimes support takes the form of providing a sounding board, Williams said.
“There’s a lot of just phone calls around, like,’ This is really hard, it’s really hard to be away from my kids and I don’t know if I want to do this.’ And then we think through different options. ‘Would you rather do rooftop solar closer [to home]? Is this just a bad day? Or, is this something that you really want to consider changing?’ So that’s sort of like, guidance and mentorship. We’re pretty much on call all the time. Just making sure that we are there and available for people,” Williams said.
For Williams, Hyte, Patton and their various community and industry partners, RSP is not so much social service as an investment in society, and beyond that, working toward achieving a true just transition away from a carbon-fuel powered economy.
“So really our mission is to try to make these careers viable and sustainable for people through all that additional support …The success is not graduating the program. That’s a milestone. That’s a really great important milestone.
“But it doesn’t mean anything if people aren’t actually changing the trajectory of their lives and their family’s lives. And if we aren’t actually changing the face of what solar looks like in Illinois and across the country. It’s so important for us to be clear about what success is. And success is a long-term career in green energy,” Williams said.
As low-income households face the dual burden of weather extremes and high energy costs, energy efficiency is an increasingly important strategy for both climate mitigation and lower utility bills.
Passive House standards — which create a building envelope so tight that central heating and cooling systems may not be needed at all — promise to dramatically slash energy costs, and are starting to appear in “stretch codes” for buildings, including in Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington and New York.
And while some builders are balking at the initial up-front cost, other developers are embracing passive house metrics as a solution for affordable multifamily housing.
“We’re trying to make zero energy, high performing buildings that are healthy and low energy mainstream everywhere,” said Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder and executive director of Passive House Institute-U.S., or Phius.
Klingenberg says the additional work needed to meet an aggressive efficiency standard, is, in the long run, not that expensive. Constructing a building to passive standards is initially only about 3%-5% more expensive than building a conventional single family home, or 0%-3% more for multifamily construction, according to Phius.
“This is not rocket science… We’re just beefing up the envelope. We’re doing all the good building science, we’re doing all the healthy stuff. We’re downsizing the [heating and cooling] system, and now we need someone to optimize that process,” Klingenberg said.
Phius in practice and action
A Phius-certified building does not employ a conventional central heating and cooling system. Instead, it depends on an air-tight building envelope, highly efficient ventilation and strategically positioned, high-performance windows to exploit solar gain during both winter and summer and maximize indoor comfort.
The tight envelope for Phius buildings regulates indoor air temperature, which can be a literal lifesaver when power outages occur during extreme heat waves or cold snaps, said Doug Farr, founder and principal of architecture firm Farr Associates.
Farr pointed to the example of the Academy for Global Citizenship in Chicago, which was built to Phius standards.
“There was a really cold snap in January. Somehow the power went out [and the building] was without electricity for two or three days. And the internal temperature in the building dropped two degrees over three days.”
Farr said that example shows a clear benefit to high efficiency that justifies the cost.
“You talk about the ultimate resilience where you’re not going to die in a power outage either in the summer or the winter. You know, that’s pretty valuable.”
There is also a business case to be made for implementing Phius and other sustainability metrics into residential construction, such as lowered bills that can appeal to market-rate buyers and renters, and reduced long-term maintenance costs for building owners.
AJ Patton, founder and CEO of 548 Enterprise in Chicago, says in response to questions about how to convince developers to consider factors beyond the bottom line, simply, “they shouldn’t.”
Instead, he touts lower operating costs for energy-efficiency metrics rather than climate mitigation when he pitches his projects to his colleagues.
“I can’t sell people on climate change anymore,” he said. “If you don’t believe by now, the good Lord will catch you when He catch you.
“But if I can sell you on lowering your operating expenses, if I can sell you on the marketability, on the fact that your tenants will have 30%, 40% lower individual expenses, that’s a marketing angle from a developer owner, that’s what I push on my contemporaries,” Patton said. “And then that’s when they say, ‘if you’re telling the truth, and if your construction costs are not more significant than mine, then I’m sold.’”
Phius principles can require specialized materials and building practices, Klingenberg said. But practitioners are working toward finding ways to manage costs by sourcing domestically available materials rather than relying on imports.
“The more experienced an architect [or developer] gets, they understand that they can replace these specialized components with more generic materials and you can get the same effect,” Klingenberg said.
Patton is presently incorporating Phius principles as the lead developer for 3831 W Chicago Avenue, a mixed use development located on Chicago’s West Side. The project, billed as the largest passive house design project in the city to date, will cover an entire city block, incorporating approximately 60 mixed-income residential units and 9,000 sq ft of commercial and community space.
Another project, Sendero Verde, located in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, is the largest certified passive-house building in the United States with 709 units. Completed in April, Sendero Verde is designed to provide cool conditions in the summer and warmth during the winter — a vast improvement for the low-income and formerly unhoused individuals and families who live there.
Barriers and potential solutions
Even without large upfront building cost premiums and with the increased impact of economies of scale, improved technology and materials, many developers still feel constrained to cut costs, Farr said.
“There’s entire segments of the development spectrum in housing, even in multifamily housing in Chicago, where if you’re a developer of rental housing time and again … they feel like they have no choice but to keep things as the construction as cheap as possible because their competitors all do. And then, some architecture firms only work with those ‘powerless’ developers and they get code-compliant buildings.”
But subsidies, such as federal low income housing credits, IRS tax breaks and resources from the Department of Energy also provide a means for developers to square the circle, especially for projects aimed toward very low-income residents.
Nonetheless, making the numbers work often requires taking a long-term view of development, according to Brian Nowak, principal at Sweetgrass Design Studio in Minnesota. Nowak was the designer for Hillcrest Village, an affordable housing development in Northfield that does not utilize Phius building metrics, but does incorporate net-zero energy usage standards.
“It’s an investment over time, to build resilient, energy-efficient housing,” he told the Energy News Network in June 2023.
“That should be everyone’s goal. And if we don’t, for example, it affects our school system. It affects the employers at Northfield having people that are readily available to come in and fill the jobs that are needed.
“That’s a significant long-term benefit of a project like this. And that is not just your monthly rents on the building; it’s the cost of the utilities as well. When those utilities include your electricity and your heating and cooling that’s a really big deal.”
Developers like Patton are determined to incorporate sustainability metrics into affordable housing and commercial developments both because it’s good business and because it’s the right thing to do.
“I’m not going to solve every issue. I’m going to focus on clean air, clean water, and lowering people’s utility bills. That’s my focus. I’m not going to design the greatest architectural building. I’m not even interested in hiring those type of architects.
“I had a lived experience of having my heat cut off in the middle of winter. I don’t want that to ever happen to anybody I know ever again,” Patton said. “So if I can lower somebody’s cost of living, that’s my sole focus. And there’s been a boatload of buy-in from that, because those are historically [not] things [present] in the communities I invest in.”
A major expansion of battery storage may be the most economical and environmentally beneficial way for Illinois to maintain grid reliability as it phases out fossil fuel generation, a new study finds.
The analysis was commissioned by the nonprofit Clean Grid Alliance and solar organizations as state lawmakers consider proposed incentives for private developers to build battery storage.
“The outlook is not great for bringing on major amounts of new capacity to replace the retiring capacity,” said Mark Pruitt, former head of the Illinois Power Agency and author of the study, which suggests batteries will be a more realistic path forward than a massive buildout of new generation and transmission infrastructure.
The proposed legislation — SB 3959 and HB 5856 — would require the Illinois Power Agency to procure energy storage capacity for deployment by utilities ComEd and Ameren. Payments would be based on the difference between energy market prices and the costs of charging batteries off-peak, to ensure the storage would be profitable. The need for incentives would theoretically ratchet down over time.
“As market prices for power go up, your incentive goes down,” Pruit said. “The idea is to provide an incentive that bridges the gap between the cost of battery technology and the value in the market. Over time, those will equalize and level out.”
The bills, introduced in May at the end of the legislature’s spring session, would amend existing energy law to add energy storage incentives to state policy, along with existing incentives for nuclear and renewables.
The study noted that Illinois will need at least 8,500 new megawatts of capacity and possibly as much as 15,000 new megawatts between 2030 and 2049, with increased demand driven in part by the growth of data centers. Twenty-five data centers being proposed in Illinois would use as much energy as the state’s five nuclear plants generate, according to nuclear plant owner Exelon’s CEO Calvin Butler Jr., quoted by Bloomberg.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) found in its summer and winter 2024 assessments that within MISO and PJM regional grids, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana are all at “elevated” risk of insufficient capacity.
“NERC, PJM, MISO and the Illinois Commerce Commission have all identified the potential for capacity shortfalls,” said Pruitt. “You do have some options for alleviating that. You can build transmission and bring in capacity from outside the state. You can maintain your current domestic generating capacity [without retiring fossil fuel plants]. You could expand your domestic generating capacity. And an independent variable is your growth rate. All these have to work together, there’s no silver bullet. We know there are major challenges on each of those fronts.”
Gloomy numbers
The latest PJM capacity auction results showed capacity prices increasing from $28.92/MW-Day for the 2024/25 period to $269.92/MW-Day — a nearly 10-fold increase — for the following year. That “translates into an annual cost increase of about $350 for a typical single-family household served by ComEd,” Pruitt said. “The increase in costs indicates that more capacity supply is required to meet capacity demand in the future.”
There are many new generation projects in the queue for interconnection by MISO and PJM, but many of them drop out before ever being deployed because of unviable economics, long delays, regulatory challenges and other issues. A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory noted that while interconnection requests for renewables have skyrocketed since the Inflation Reduction Act, only 15% of interconnected capacity was actually completed in PJM and MISO between 2000 and 2018, and experts say similar completion rates persist.
“This finding indicates that deploying sufficient new capacity resources to offset [fossil fuel] retirements is not likely to occur in the near term,” said Pruitt. “Just because something is planned doesn’t mean it gets built.”
Meanwhile the state is running out of funds for the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) that are crucial to driving wind and solar development. The 2024 long-term renewable resources procurement plan by the IPA shows the state’s fund for renewables reaching a deficit in 2028, so that spending on RECs from renewables will have to be scaled back by as much as 60%.
Long-distance transmission lines could bring wind energy or other electricity from out of state. But planned transmission lines have faced hurdles. The Grain Belt Express transmission line, in the works for a decade, was in August denied needed approval from an Illinois appellate court. The transmission line, proposed by Invenergy, would have brought wind power from Kansas to load centers to the east.
“That sets it back years,” Pruitt said. “Transmission is a very long-term solution. I’m sure people are working diligently on it, but it’s five to 10 years before you get something approved and built.”
Value proposition, solar benefits
Pruitt’s study found that if 8,500 MW of energy storage were deployed between 2030 and 2049, Illinois customers could see up to $3 billion in savings compared to if they had to foot the bill for increased capacity without new storage. The savings would come because of lower market prices in capacity auctions, as well as investment in new transmission and generation that would be avoided.
Pruitt found that $11 billion to $28 billion in macro-level economic benefits could also result, with blackouts avoided, reduced fossil fuel emissions and jobs and economic stimulus created.
Pruitt’s analysis indicates that the incentives proposed in the legislation would cost $6.4 billion to customers. But the storage would result in $9.4 billion in savings compared to the status quo, hence a $3 billion overall savings between 2030 and 2049.
“Solar is great, but solar is an intermittent resource; battery storage when paired with solar allows it to be far more reliable,” said Andrew Linhares, Central Region senior manager for the Solar Energy Industry Association. “Battery storage is not as cheap as solar, but its reliability is its hallmark. Combining the resources gives you a cheap and reliable resource.”
“Solar and storage is this powerful tool that can help reduce costs for consumers and create new jobs and economic activity,” he continued. “I don’t believe that same picture is there for building out new natural gas resources. Anything that helps storage, helps solar and vice versa. CEJA sees these two technologies as being joined at the hip for the future, they are being seen more and more as a single resource.”
The 25-year-old Chicago resident is among the latest graduates of an intensive 13-week solar training course that’s helping to connect employers with job candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.
Moton was referred by another job readiness program meant to keep youth away from gun violence. He “never knew about solar” before but now sees himself owning a solar company and using the proceeds to fund his music and clothing design endeavors.
He and others interviewed for jobs with a dozen employers assembled at a church on Chicago’s West Side on August 1 as part of the fourth training cohort for the 548 Foundation, which is partnering with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on a recently-announced $30 million initiative to create 1,000 solar jobs in Chicago’s South and West side neighborhoods.
The 548 Foundation is part of 548 Enterprise, a suite of renewable energy and affordable housing development projects, launched in 2019 and named after the public housing unit where co-founder A.J. Patton grew up.
The idea is to help keep housing affordable by using solar to lower energy bills, while training people left out of the traditional energy economy to supply that solar.
“When you invest in a community, the biggest question is who benefits, who gets the jobs?” asked Patton, during the job fair. “This is as good as it gets,” he added, about the recent state investment. “We just have to keep advocating for quality policy.”
Employers at the job fair said such training programs are crucial for them to find workers in Illinois, where robust solar incentives are attracting many out-of-state companies eager to hire and hit the ground. Mike Huneke, energy operations manager for Minnesota-based Knobelsdorff said he has hired 18 employees from previous 548 cohorts, and he expected to make about six job offers after the recent interviews.
“Illinois is on fire,” said Huneke. “We’re not from Illinois, so finding this new talent pipeline is what we need. We have a ton of projects coming up.”
Lisa Cotton, 30, has dreamed of being an electrician since she was a kid. She had received two job offers at the August 1 fair before the group even broke for lunch.
“A lot of times you go through a training program, get a certificate, and that’s the end of it,” said Jacqueline Williams of the Restoring Sovereignty Project, a partner which administers the wraparound services for the training program.
The 548 program makes sure to connect graduates with employers, and only companies with specific openings to fill are invited to the job fair. 548 and its partners also stay in contact with graduates and employers to make sure the placement is successful.
“We have a post-grad program where they can call us any time, and an alumni fund. If an employer says, ‘This guy can’t come to work because his radiator is busted,’ we’ll take care of that,” said Williams.
Instructor Sam Garrard talks with students about how to install a roof-mounted bracket. Credit: Lloyd DeGrane for the Energy News Network
Achieving equity
After Illinois passed an ambitious clean energy law in 2017, multiple solar training programs were launched in keeping with the law’s equity provisions. But employers and advocates were frustrated by a seeming disconnect in which many trainees never got solar jobs, and employers weren’t sure how to find the workers.
Since then, the state has passed another clean energy law – the 2021 Climate & Equitable Jobs Act, with even more ambitious equity mandates; and non-profit organizations have developed and honed more advanced workforce training programs. To access incentives under the law, employers need to hire a percent of equity-eligible applicants that rises to 30% by 2030. The program prioritizes people impacted by the criminal justice system, alumni of the foster care system, and people who live in equity-designated communities.
548 affiliates help employers navigate the paperwork and requirements involved in the equity incentives. Several employers at the job fair said this is a plus, but noted that regardless of equity, they are desperate for the type of highly-trained, enthusiastic candidates coming out of the 548 program.
“This is a great way to bridge what the state is trying to do with its clean energy goals, and connecting under-represented people with these opportunities,” said Annette Poulimenos, talent acquisition manager of Terrasmart, a major utility-scale solar provider. “We came here ready to hire, and I think we’re going to walk away with some new talent.”
Member organizations of the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism do outreach to recruit most of the training program participants.
Nicholas Brock found out about the training thanks to a staffer at one of these organizations who noticed his professional attitude and punctuality as he walked by every morning to a different workforce program.
“Whatever I do, nine times out of 10, I’m the first one to get there, before the managers,” said Brock, 20. “He noticed that and asked me, ‘Have you ever heard about solar panels?’”
Brock knew little about solar at that point, but now he aims to be a solar project manager.
“I’m so glad I came here,” he said. “They bring out the best in you.”
Full service
Wraparound, holistic services are key to the program’s success. During the training and for a year afterwards, trainees and alumni can apply for financial help or other types of assistance.
“There are so many barriers, it might be child care or your car is impounded,” said Williams. “We might be writing a letter to a judge asking to ‘please take him off house arrest so he can work.’ It’s intensive case management, navigating the bureaucratic anomalies that arise when you’re system-impacted.”
Moises Vega III, 26 – who always wanted to work in renewables because “it’s literally the future” – noted that his car battery died during the training program, and he was provided funds to get his vehicle working again.
While ample support is available, the program itself is rigorous and demanding. Classes meet from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, and trainees are required to check their phones at the door and be fully focused, notes instructor and 548 workforce strategies director Michael Thomas. During the hands-on boot camp week, the day starts at 6 a.m.
“That’s when the trades start,” noted Thomas. “You need to figure out how that works, how will you get child care at 5:30 a.m.?”
Sixty-one trainees started in the first three cohorts, and 46 graduated, the first group in July 2023. The fourth cohort started with 25, and as of the job fair, 18 were on track to graduate. Eighty-five percent of graduates from the first three cohorts are currently working in the field, according to 548.
“Even though I wish the graduation rate were higher, the people who commit to it, stay with it,” said Kynnée Golder, CEO of Global HR Business Solutions, which has an oversight role for the 548 Foundation. “It’s monumental, it’s life-changing for a lot of people.”
Moises Vega III, leveling solar panel for placement onto a pitched, shingled, mocked-up roof. Credit: Lloyd DeGrane for the Energy News Network
Comprehensive curriculum
The curriculum starts with life skills, including interpersonal relationships, resume-building, financial planning and more. Each day begins with a spiritual reflection.
The students learn about electricity and energy, and soon move into specific instruction on solar installation and operation. Rooms at St. Agatha’s church served as labs, where students connected wires, built converters and eventually mounted solar panels on a demonstration pitched, shingled roof.
Terrance Hanson, 40, credited Thomas as “the best instructor ever.”
“I’m not a young kid, my brain is no longer a sponge,” Hanson said. “He made sure I got it all. Now I feel like I know so much, I’m confident and prepared to get out and show what I can do.”
He added that people in disinvested neighborhoods have ample untapped potential to be part of the clean energy workforce.
“You see a lot of basketball players in my community because there are a lot of basketball hoops,” he said. “If there were golf courses in the hood, you would see more golfers. It’s about opportunities. And this was the most amazing and empowering thing I’ve ever been through.”
Jack Ailey co-founded Ailey Solar in 2012, making it the oldest still-operating residential installer in Illinois, by his calculations. He noted that there can be high turnover among installers, and intensive training and preparation is key.
“You’re out there in the sun, the cold, it’s heavy physical labor, wrestling 40-pound panels up to the roof,” he said. “You have to know what you’re getting into.”
“Some training programs vary in quality,” Ailey added, but he was impressed by the candidates at the 548 job fair.
Trainees test for and receive multiple certifications, including the OSHA 30 for quality assurance, and the NCCER and NABCEP for construction and solar professionals, respectively. The program is also a pre-apprenticeship qualifier, allowing graduates to move on to paid, long-term apprenticeships with unions representing carpenters, electricians, plumbers and laborers – the gateway to a lucrative and stable career in the trades.
Thomas noted that most trade unions still don’t have a major focus on solar.
“We’re ahead of the unions, and our graduates bring real value to them, and to the companies,” he said. “The students might know more than a company’s foreman knows. It’s a win-win situation. Solar is a nascent industry, there’s so much opportunity in this space.”
When Tredgett Page, 38, connected with 548, his auto detailing work and other odd jobs were not going well. He had always loved science and been curious about photosynthesis and the sun’s power.
“I had been in the streets before, and I was leaning back toward that, but God brought me here,” he said. “Now I have the confidence, I know what I’m talking about, I know about megawatts and kilowatts, net metering, grid-connected, pretty much anything about solar.”
He sees metaphorical significance in his new trade: “Energy is life, and it teaches you balance, it’s all about negative and positive ions.” He feels like “the sky is the limit” after the training.
“I have so much skill that they gave me, now I’m hungry to use it,” he said. “I’m a little nervous, but optimistic, excited, very exuberant!”
On June 7, 2023, exactly 2,206 large trucks and buses passed through the intersection of Kedzie Avenue and 31st Street in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood.
That’s an average of 1.5 heavy-duty vehicles per minute — much more in the morning and afternoon — rumbling through this crossroads in a dense, residential neighborhood near multiple parks and schools.
The numbers are the results of a groundbreaking truck counting program carried out by the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, which is using the information to bolster its demands for electric trucks and an end to development that burdens communities of color with diesel pollution.
The Chicago Truck Data Project, carried out by LVEJO along with the Center for Neighborhood Technology and Fish Transportation Group, used cameras and software to systematically measure the number and types of vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians for 24-hour periods at 35 intersections around the city. The project website launched this spring, and organizers hope to continue compiling, analyzing and modeling truck counts, as well as helping allies carry out similar work in other cities.
“This is the power of community science,” said José Miguel Acosta Córdova, LVEJO transportation justice program manager. “We’ve had to collect this data, when this is data the city should have been doing.”
The highest concentration of truck traffic was just south of Little Village in the Archer Heights neighborhood, where 5,159 trucks and buses passed in a day. A few miles east in the heavily residential McKinley Park neighborhood, in a single day over 4,000 trucks and buses passed, along with more than 800 pedestrians.
“It paints a picture of pedestrian proximity to truck traffic, which is an air pollution concern, and a safety concern,” said Paulina Vaca, urban resilience advocate with the Center for Neighborhood Technology.
Long-standing demands
In years past, LVEJO members had conducted grassroots manual truck counts — standing on corners to log the frequency of pollution-spewing traffic.
“Unfortunately we weren’t taken seriously by the Department of Planning,” said Vaca. “With [the Chicago Truck Data Project] we wanted to be more systematic with the research. This is hard evidence, hard proof. We wanted community advocates to be able to wield these numbers for organizing efforts, tying them to state-level policies.”
Electrifying trucks is a primary way to reduce truck emissions, protecting public health while reducing carbon emissions, especially as increasing amounts of electricity come from renewables.
LVEJO and other groups have for years been calling on Illinois to adopt California’s standards on clean trucks and zero-emissions vehicles. Only 11 states — none of them in the Midwest — have adopted California’s Advanced Clean Trucks standard, according to analysis by the Alternative Fuels Data Center. The standard requires manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emissions trucks through 2035, and includes reporting requirements for large fleets. Seventeen states plus the District of Columbia have adopted California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle standards, which create similar requirements for cars and light trucks. Minnesota is the only Midwestern state to adopt those standards.
A 2022 study by the American Lung Association estimates that if truck fleets electrify by 2050, the cumulative benefits could include $735 billion in public health benefits, 66,800 fewer deaths, 1.75 million fewer asthma attacks and 8.5 million fewer lost workdays. The Chicago area would be among the top 10 metro areas — and the only Midwestern one — that would see the most health benefits from truck electrification, the report found.
A winding road
The U.S. EPA reports that heavy duty trucks contribute more than 25% of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector nationwide, though they make up only about 5% of traffic nationally. While greenhouse gases don’t have localized health impacts, such emissions from diesel vehicles come in tandem with particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and other compounds that hurt nearby residents most.
In Illinois, trucks are responsible for 67% of nitrogen oxide pollution, 59% of fine particulate pollution, and 36% of the greenhouse gas emissions from on-road vehicles despite making up only 7% of those vehicles, according to a 2022 study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Cleaning up truck emissions has long been a focus of advocates and policymakers, but progress has been slow.
An August 2021 executive order from President Joe Biden said that, “America must lead the world on clean and efficient cars and trucks,” and called for a rulemaking process for heavy-duty trucks under the Clean Air Act.
The final phase 3 rule is billed by the EPA as more protective than the previous rule, but includes a slower phase-in of standards than an earlier phase 3 proposal backed by environmental justice advocates.
Union of Concerned Scientists senior vehicles analyst Dave Cooke wrote in a recent blog post that the phase 3 regulations mean up to 623,000 new electric trucks might hit the road between 2027 and 2032, “with zero-emission trucks making up over one third of all new truck sales by 2032.”
“But that number is highly dependent on manufacturer compliance strategy and complementary policies,” Cooke continued, “and the path to a zero-emission freight sector remains uncertain.”
Cooke fears that electric heavy-duty trucks will be sold primarily in states that have adopted California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, leaving fewer available for other states.
“The rule risks having communities of haves (in ACT states) and have-nots (in the remainder of the country),” wrote Cooke, “precisely the sort of situation a federal rule is supposed to ward against.”
A national EJ issue
Reducing heavy-duty truck emissions has long been a focus for Clean Air for the Long Haul, a national coalition of environmental justice groups including the Wisconsin Green Muslims, South Bronx Unite, the Green Door Initiative in Detroit, WE-ACT for Environmental Justice and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.
Wisconsin Green Muslims has organized several in-person and virtual events for community members to talk with state and local officials about truck emissions.
Huda Alkaff, co-founder of the organization, noted that their office is on Fond du Lac Avenue, a major thoroughfare plied by truck traffic. Alkaff described the fight for clean air in a blog during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, writing that people can fast from food and even water for limited times but cannot abstain from breathing air.
Alkaff said local leaders would like to do mobile air monitoring and truck counting, similar to LVEJO.
“Learning from each other, that’s our power,” she said.
In Milwaukee residential areas bisected by highway-type roads like Fond du Lac and Capitol Drive, meanwhile, air pollution is compounded by the safety risks posed by trucks.
“Let’s look at the routes, let’s look at the timing, the types of things that might be able to happen with minimum disruption,” she said.
She noted that residents don’t want to endanger the livelihood of truckers who can’t afford to invest in new equipment. But she’s hopeful the transition can be facilitated by federal funding, like recently announced EPA grants of $932 million for clean heavy-duty vehicles for government agencies, tribes and school districts.
Bridges, warehouses and railyards
In Detroit, construction of a new international bridge to Canada is expected to increase the heavy diesel burden on local residents already affected by trucks crossing the international Ambassador Bridge, as well as heavy industry.
“We have a huge issue with maternal health outcomes because Black moms are living near freeways and mobile sources [of pollution],” said Donele Wilkins, CEO of the Green Door Initiative and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. “Birth outcomes are huge issues, asthma, issues with heart disease are elevated in ways they should not be because of exposure to mobile sources.”
The under-construction Gordie Howe International Bridge is aimed specifically at commercial truck traffic, and unlike the Ambassador, it will allow hazardous materials. The new bridge culminates in the Delray neighborhood, a heavily industrial enclave that has a much higher Latino population — 77% — than the city as a whole.
In Detroit, Chicago and other cities, warehouses are a major and growing source of diesel emissions from trucks. A 2023 investigation involving manual truck counts by Bridge Detroit and Outlier Media found that one truck per minute passes homes near an auto warehouse on Detroit’s East Side.
An Environmental Defense Fund study found that in Illinois, 1.9 million people live within half a mile of a warehouse, and Latino people make up 33% of such warehouse neighbors, while they make up only 17% of the total state population. Black people are also disproportionately represented among warehouse neighbors, while white people are underrepresented.
Little Village gained national attention with the closure of a coal plant in 2012, and city officials worked with community members on a stakeholder process to envision alternate uses for the site. Residents envisioned a community commercial kitchen, indoor sustainable agriculture and renewable energy-related light manufacturing as possible new identities.
Many were furious when the site became a Target warehouse, a magnet for truck traffic. LVEJO is now working with elected officials on drafting city and state legislation that would regulate and limit new warehouse development, even as new warehouses are proposed in the area, including a controversial 15-acre plan on Little Village’s northern border.
LVEJO’s Acosta notes that environmental justice is “not only about electrification but land-use reform.”
“The reason why all these facilities are concentrated where they are is because of zoning, historically racist practices,” said Acosta, who is pursuing a doctorate in geography and GIS mapping at the University of Illinois. “We want to completely reform the way we do land-use planning and industrial planning, not forcing our communities to coexist with trucks every day. It’s also thinking about pedestrian and bicyclist access and safety, mobility justice.”
Annamaria Leon was initially enchanted by the lush greenery of Douglass Park and the handsome greystone homes of North Lawndale, located on Chicago’s West Side. But it wasn’t until after she moved into the greystone she first rented and would eventually purchase that she realized what lay beneath the surface of the stunning architecture of the neighborhood and its showplace park: the ravages of decades of redlining, disinvestment and racial unrest.
“I got off the highway and I ended up in North Lawndale. I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world. Douglass Park, you know, and being a feng shui practitioner, you had the curved streets and the old houses with the big doors. I said, ‘oh my gosh, I want to live here,’” Leon said.
She also discovered that her new neighborhood had transformed from a predominantly Jewish enclave to an almost all Black area. This transformation is reflected in the naming of Douglass Park, visualized by architect William LeBaron Jenney and reimagined by world-renowned landscape architect Jens Jensen.
The park was originally Douglas Park, with one “s,” named for Stephen A. Douglas, who was instrumental in bringing the Illinois Central Railway to Chicago and famed for his debates with Abraham Lincoln. Due to his pro-slavery stance, the park was renamed in honor of abolitionists Anna and Frederick Douglass in 2020.
Leon, whose family origins are Filipino, dug in, and committed herself to applying her extensive knowledge in sustainable urban agriculture and permaculture to cultivating much-needed green spaces, enhancing resiliency against the effects of climate change, and improving the overall quality of life in the place she now considers her home.
Digging in
As the co-founder of both Permaculture Chicago Teaching Institute and Homan Grown, L3C, Leon applies her experience and expertise as a certified permaculture designer and dynamic educator. She also draws on years of experience with her former employer, Christy Webber Landscapes, where she developed a reputation for creating community gardens, including work on high profile commissions for garden installations in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Leon has forged a number of collaborative relationships and built a deep reservoir of trust, establishing herself as a resource for enacting social change. She is recognized as a leader, and respected for her willingness to engage with other community stakeholders.
Her determination to grow roots in North Lawndale is consistent with that overall world view.
“When I look at the condition of the groups in my community, if they’re in need, if they’re hurting, I need to do something about that. Because my life is the groups that make up my community. I’m a connector…If you don’t share your ideas with the people in your community, it doesn’t work; it’s only like you talking into the mirror. Those bonds of trust are what makes a community happen,” Leon said.
For Leon, environmental elements such as abundant green spaces are essential to the overall health of any community, including to provide a cooling effect as climate-fueled heat waves threaten urban areas. North Lawndale, she believes, is not and should not be an exception.
She is outspoken about calling out bad actors as opportunists seeking to exploit the community for their own political or financial gain — or both.
“If I see that all you’re doing is using the community, and to use a phrase, being a ‘poverty pimp,’ no, I’m not going to be with you. I’m not going to help you. Because unless you alter and transform how you see my community, why would I engage with you?” Leon said.
At the same time, she also looks to allies to facilitate acceptance among community members who trust them, but who do not yet know her.
“Even though I’ve been there [for years], I haven’t been there [for] generations. And I’m also not African American. If I can’t be effective in [communication with stakeholders], I want somebody else who can be effective in that, and I want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. But I am also not going to dictate how they express that.
“I need to find somebody who can break down those barriers for me… My commitment is to have North Lawndale thrive, to have people find beauty wherever they are, and for them to be self-expressed. That’s what guides me in my work. If it’s about architecture, if it’s about biking, if it’s about healthcare, is that providing beauty? Is it having people be self-expressed in their life? Then I’m for that,” Leon said.
Frustration and municipal red tape
Like many Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, North Lawndale suffers from disinvestment, including a paucity of green spaces. But the community’s reception of Chicago Department of Planning and Development proposals was initially lukewarm, Leon said. Leon persuaded community members to attend subsequent meetings and take an active role in executing various green space initiatives.
“We had a lot of people come because they trusted me. Like, if Annamaria is asking us to do something, let’s go,” Leon said.
But Leon also expressed frustration with dealing with the territorialism that often occurs with municipal politics.
“If our federal government, our local government, our city government, our alderpeople, when they say ‘Hey, I’m going to assist you with this project’ and they actually assist you with the project, and [if] they created it in a way that it is planned to succeed versus planned to fail, then this becomes stronger and stronger and stronger,” Leon said. “But there’s so many agendas out there. We can’t work like that anymore.”
For instance, a number of proposed greening projects in North Lawndale have run into significant hurdles, some of which Leon suspects were integrated by design. She highlighted one instance where a contract for green space maintenance in various lots was given to an organization with no experience doing that work.
“Why does the city then put it on the community? And then the community fails. Then they say, see, ‘we tried and they couldn’t take care of it.’”
Another project, Leon says, was a plot that featured pollinator-friendly plants that instead have simply been mowed, defeating the purpose of the original design.
“I’m part of the tree equity collaborative. I’m part of the urban heat island watch. And trees are great. But if you look at the heat index, it’s still high. And so, you have to have deep roots in the soil to bring up that water up. And [the greenery] becomes like an air conditioner.”
Making an impact
Despite dealing with red tape and other hurdles, Leon and her allies have made significant headway with adding green spaces, both for recreation and as a vehicle for facilitating community and economic development in North Lawndale.
For example, the North Lawndale Greening Committee recently expanded their portfolio of edible community gardens from 14 to 20, utilizing a city program to develop vacant lots while providing paid employment to residents of the community, Leon said.
During a recent presentation at the Morton Arboretum, located in the Chicago suburb of Lisle, Leon also described several projects administered by Stone Temple Baptist Church, a former Jewish synagogue located in North Lawndale, including a vacant lot that has been converted to a community garden and performance space. The church has also created a free community store stocked with donated furniture, Leon said.
The Stone Temple Baptist Church in Chicago’s North Lawndale was a former Jewish temple, and still features the Star of David in its architecture. Credit: Audrey Henderson
A new cafe and flower shop is also scheduled to open in the near future, operating on a donation basis to avoid paying hefty zoning fees, Leon explained during her presentation.
And while grants have been a significant source of funding for various green space projects in North Lawndale, Leon and her collaborators are working toward greater community autonomy in furthering their mission of improving the neighborhood and its green spaces.
“We’ve received almost $2 million in grants, but we’re weaning ourselves off of the grants. I don’t think we can fully, but you know grants are fickle and you have to fulfill what the grantor wants. Sometimes it takes people off of their mission.”
For Leon, good management of green spaces provides a potentially useful blueprint for improving the overall quality of life — for North Lawndale, for the city and beyond.
“It’s land tenure. It’s the way you manage your resources. It’s also societal, how you create your society. Is it hierarchical? Is it linear? You could just look at the soil. What makes a soil fertile is there’s a lot of the little organic microorganisms in there,” Leon said. “But those microorganisms live because they have air and they have good shelter that’s not poison, which is the soil. And it has good maintenance, and they respect each other’s boundaries and they collaborate.
Illinois’s carbon dioxide pipeline and sequestration law passed May 26 is being described as among the nation’s strictest. It is only the second carbon dioxide pipeline moratorium in the U.S., after California, and it creates a significant permitting process once the moratorium is lifted.
But landowners and advocates are still unhappy with several key provisions left out of the law, and said they are exploring options to end the use of eminent domain for carbon pipelines and protect landowners from carbon being sequestered in their underground pore space against their will.
“There’s a lot of good in there, but it definitely is a work in progress in terms of guard rails,” said Jennifer Cassel, a senior attorney for Earthjustice who worked with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition that endorsed the new law after members previously worked with lawmakers on a stronger bill. “The federal uncertainty was part of the push, and there’s so much of a gold rush already happening,” with applications for 22 carbon dioxide injection wells pending in the state, plus various pipeline proposals.
SB 1289, or the SAFE Act, allows a company seeking to sequester carbon to move forward if the owners of 75% of the affected land agree to the plan, which provides them compensation. That means, critics note, that owners of 25% of the land cannot stop a project, even if they are opposed. Owners of small several-acre parcels would have few rights compared to large landowners, noted Pam Richart, co-founder of the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines.
The coalition had worked with lawmakers on a much more stringent bill, which would have limited the use of eminent domain to acquire land for pipelines and sequestration. It would also have banned the injection of carbon dioxide through the Mahomet Aquifer. The Farm Bureau opposed the SAFE Act in part because it didn’t address eminent domain, though the new law includes some protections regarding compensation for land damage.
“Landowners are profoundly disappointed that the act was approved without eminent domain [limits],” Richart said. “The landowner protections weren’t as strong as we hoped.”
The coalition’s preferred bill would not have allowed forced integration of pore space against landowners’ will. Richart said they expected some compromise on that front, but not to the extent enshrined in the SAFE Act.
“That’s not how this is supposed to work,” she said. “If a project is in the public interest, you wouldn’t expect landowners of 25% of the land to hold out.”
The SAFE Act stands for Safety and Aid for the Environment in Carbon Capture and Sequestration. It still awaits signature by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has indicated he will sign it, and bills become law after 60 days in Illinois if the governor takes no action.
Future options
Richart said advocates don’t plan to “reopen the whole process” around legislation, but hope to work with legislators on a trailer bill that could increase protections for landowners.
“A lot of legislators expressed serious concern about the aquifer, I wouldn’t be surprised if those issues and potentially others come back up in some form,” Cassel said.
The new law places a moratorium on new carbon dioxide pipelines for two years or until the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issues regulations for carbon dioxide pipelines, which are in the works. The previous bill advocates backed included a moratorium of four years or until the federal regulations are adopted. Cassel said labor unions felt that moratorium was too long.
Richart said the Illinois law is only a “quasi-moratorium” since companies can begin the application process for new pipelines even before the PHMSA regulations come out.
Meanwhile the SAFE Act does not include setbacks from properties for carbon dioxide pipelines. If the PHMSA regulations do not include setbacks, which is likely, Illinois advocates could push for setbacks under the permitting process created by the SAFE Act, since it allows for additional safety measures to be developed provided they are not in conflict with federal regulations.
Advocates say county governments, which have in multiple cases refused to approve sequestration sites connected to pipelines, could work together to push for setback policy.
Benefits of new law
Advocates are grateful for a robust public engagement process created by the new law.
“Before there was no requirement to notify anybody about a carbon dioxide pipeline except when the Illinois Commerce Commission was ready to begin its application process,” said Richart, citing two recent controversial proposals. “Wolf never notified anybody, One Earth never notified anybody. The commerce commission just said, ‘You better come to this hearing, it might be subject to eminent domain.’”
The Illinois Commerce Commission decides whether a given proposal is in the public interest and able to invoke eminent domain, but previously the commission had no authority over carbon sequestration sites and its consideration of pipelines was largely limited to property values.
The SAFE Act creates a permitting process that requires companies hold two public meetings in each affected county and post materials about the proposal and public comment process. Under the new law, the Illinois Commerce Commission can consider safety and other information in deciding whether to grant eminent domain powers.
Under the new law, companies must also pay into an emergency response fund and create an emergency plan, which entails modeling about possible risks and the expected distribution of carbon dioxide plumes in case of a leak.
“They have to do computational fluid dynamics modeling, and they have to make it public, at a time when there is a definite movement by pipeline developers to make their modeling proprietary, confidential,” said Richart. “So this is huge.”
Companies doing carbon injection and sequestration must also put up money for future environmental mitigation, so future costs don’t fall on the state. The law does not allow self-bonding, a controversial financing mechanism used by coal companies in the past that ultimately forced the state to foot the bill for mine cleanup.
The SAFE Act also enshrines safeguards to make sure that carbon capture and sequestration doesn’t ultimately lead to an increase in air pollution by allowing coal plants to keep operating, and it prohibits the use of carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.
These protections gained approval from environmental justice organizations like the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, a member of the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition.
The Illinois Corn Growers Association and Illinois Renewable Fuels Association also backed the new law. Their members stand to benefit from the expansion of the ethanol industry, which depends on carbon sequestration to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. While carbon capture and sequestration was launched in Illinois in relation to coal plants, recent pipeline proposals have focused primarily on connecting ethanol plants to sequestration sites.
State Rep. Ann Williams, a sponsor of the law, said in a statement that:
“Illinois is a national leader on climate and energy policy, and SB 1289 ensures that if companies are going to use CCS as a climate mitigation strategy, they will need to meet some of the strongest standards in the nation. The CCS protections bill ensures critical guardrails are in place to protect Illinois taxpayers, landowners and our environment.”
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