By Francesca Mathewes for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
Take a stroll around Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on a sun-filled spring afternoon and it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll come across Romanesque-style greystones, classic brick three-flats and the sound of children deep in an after-school game of kickball echoing from the back alleys. What you might not be expecting is the brightly-colored mural emerging out of a vast, vacant lot along South Michigan Avenue — and, more significantly, the massive electrical battery that lies behind that painted cinder block wall.
That battery is but one part of the Bronzeville Community Microgrid, which combines rooftop solar, natural gas-fired generators and batteries to produce and store energy at a local level. Once fully operational, it will, in effect, render the entire neighborhood “energy independent,” giving it the ability to disconnect from and reconnect to Chicago’s citywide grid at will.
This will earn it the accolade of becoming the country’s first neighborhood-scale microgrid, (although its founders, Commonwealth Edison, or ComEd, point out that there could be other initiatives in the works of which they are unaware), with energy experts suggesting it could serve as a model for utilities and communities across the U.S.
Earlier this year, the project, which is funded in part by a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, passed efficacy tests demonstrating that the basic design of the system works, although it still faces a number of engineering and permitting hurdles. Once those have been cleared, the microgrid will be able to power more than 1,000 homes, businesses and public institutions such as hospitals.
This kind of self-sufficiency will likely prove increasingly vital. Like many cities, Chicago’s first electrical grid began taking shape well over a century ago. These grids have become increasingly rickety as they age, and climate change is only exacerbating their deterioration. Last year, millions in the U.S. faced power outages amid heat waves, hurricanes and winter storms.
To mitigate this, ComEd has sought to improve electric grids throughout the region over the last 10 years, including through the development of the Bronzeville microgrid. This has happened alongside more recent investments in national energy infrastructure, such as the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, signed into law last winter, which includes $65 billion for electric and grid infrastructure — the largest such investment in the country’s history.
As part of the investments in the nation’s energy systems, microgrids are increasingly being recognized for their ability to create energy security at the community scale. Their value proved critical in northern California in 2019 when 13,000 people sought refuge — and functioning electricity — at a microgrid-powered casino owned by the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe as wildfires led to blackouts across the region.
Bronzeville’s neighborhood microgrid offers more than energy resiliency, however — it has also become a blueprint for reducing communities’ contribution to climate change. This is due to the fact that the system gives its operators the ability, at scale, to introduce more renewables into its energy mix while reducing “line loss,” the electricity lost as it travels across power lines.
“Some estimates have said we lose up to 50 percent of electricity production through line loss,” says Yami Newell, a Bronzeville resident and the associate director of community projects at Elevate, a nonprofit that focuses on equitable solutions to community climate change issues. “So the shorter you can make the distance between where energy is generated and where it has to be delivered, the more significantly you reduce the problem.”
Getting connected
A key aspect of the Bronzeville microgrid that could multiply its impact is its connection to an existing microgrid in the neighborhood, housed at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Previously, the IIT grid only serviced the surrounding campus. By connecting it to Bronzeville’s, ComEd is able to expand the reach of the grid to the entire area.
The “clustering” effect created by connecting the two microgrids allows them to share energy. So, if one has generated more electricity than it requires at that point in time and the other doesn’t have enough, then the one with excess can transfer that power to the other, keeping all customers in service without needing to tap into the less efficient citywide grid.
As no microgrid has ever been built on this scale in the U.S., getting to this point hasn’t been without challenges. In addition to significant delays due to engineering issues and the City of Chicago’s arduous permitting process, ComEd initially struggled to win the acceptance of the wider community.
Reasons for the latter are linked in part to the disinvestment and financial redlining the neighborhood has faced for the last 70 years. More recently, the community has seen an increase in investment by commercial and real estate developers. While celebrated by some, for many others this represents a story unfolding in cities across the country — one where shiny new developments and amenities are superimposed on communities without buy-in from the people who have been there the longest.
In response, ComEd has been working with the community, including an advisory board of local leaders and residents, to help educate people about the purpose of the initiative and ensure it meets the needs of local residents.
One outcome of this collaboration was ComEd’s integration of local history and arts into the installation of the grid by commissioning a mural to be painted onto the sides of its battery box. The mural features the South Side Community Arts Center, located nearby the battery storage site, as well as prominent Black leaders from the neighborhood including journalist Ida B. Wells and inventor Lewis Latimer.
This addressed concerns that the battery storage site, located in the middle of a residential block, created an overly industrial-looking eyesore and disrupted the historic nature of the surrounding area.
“That’s where the emphasis of the mural came into play — to improve the aesthetics of the battery energy storage site, but also, more importantly, to draw attention to the community,” says Cory Foster, the administrator of ComEd’s diversity enrichment program and external affairs manager.
In addition to gaining buy-in, Newell points out that initiatives like the Bronzeville Community Microgrid have the potential to create direct opportunities for local residents.
“When it comes to the jobs that exist to maintain and to build out all sorts of infrastructure around these kinds of projects, the goal is … prioritizing folks who are from those communities,” she says. “As we see more projects like this come online, including renewable projects, who’s going to fill those jobs? Will the people that are working there look like the people who live there? I think Bronzeville gives us an opportunity to say, yes, we can do that.”
Like other urban areas in Chicago and across the country, Bronzeville is dealing with a multitude of community issues, including public safety and population loss, in addition to more recent concerns around public health and job loss arising out of the pandemic.
But local Alderman Pat Dowell sees the neighborhood microgrid as a step forward in establishing forward-thinking energy solutions and making sustainability a political priority.
Already forthcoming in Bronzeville are new permits that will allow ComEd to install electric charging stations along major thoroughfares, which Dowell hopes will increase the amount of electric vehicles in the area.
“We’re being forward thinking about how we can adapt to the changes that we see coming,” she says.
Francesca Mathewes wrote this article for Reasons to be Cheerful.
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By Kari Lydersen for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
The last time President Donald Trump took office, Illinois had just passed the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA), creating an ambitious renewable electricity mandate, solar incentive programs, green job training and equity provisions to propel the state’s clean energy economy.
That progress is offering both a blueprint and a source of hope for Illinois clean energy and environmental justice advocates as they try to keep the state’s clean energy transition on track during a second Trump presidency.
“The state policy is designed to be responsive to a lack of federal climate leadership, to the need for Illinois to step up into a position of climate leadership,” said Vote Solar deputy Midwest program director John Delurey, who added that since the 2024 election “I’m at the point where I can channel my existential dread into state-based action.”
Illinois lawmakers expanded on FEJA with the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) in 2021, and advocates expect another state energy bill in 2025 to prioritize energy storage and otherwise further clean energy goals, including planning for the mandatory closing of almost all fossil fuel generation by 2035.
“With CEJA we’ve mapped out an ambitious climate plan, and we’re in a strong position to further those goals even under a Trump administration,” said Madeline Semanisin, Midwest equitable building decarbonization advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This is not the first Trump administration. States and cities are more prepared this time to accelerate initiatives at the state and city level.”
That’s not to say the state won’t be affected by a president who is hostile toward clean energy policy. Several federal tax credits and grants that have helped accelerate progress in Illinois could be at risk under Trump, and a rollback of federal environmental regulations or enforcement could prolong pollution from coal ash, power plants and other sources.
James Gignac, Union of Concerned Scientists lead Midwest senior policy manager for the Climate & Energy program, said he thinks of the state’s clean energy outlook in terms of headwinds and tailwinds, which will continue to shift based on economic and political factors beyond the state’s control.
“States for many years have not been able to rely on the federal government for climate action, whether due to politics or the Supreme Court,” Gignac said. “The election results will make it harder to achieve the goals that Illinois has established. It doesn’t fundamentally change the energy policy path that the state is on, it just makes it even more urgent that state legislators pass additional policies.”
Tax credits and grants
Federal funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other federal programs have helped Illinois and individual cities and counties carry out their clean energy goals. Illinois was awarded more than $430 million in a Climate Pollution Reduction Grant for implementation of the state’s goals on industrial decarbonization, clean energy, clean transportation and freight, climate-smart agriculture, and building energy efficiency.
Illinois was also awarded $156 million in federal Solar for All funds to bolster solar and equity goals including workforce training, residential solar deployment, and community engagement.
Illinois advocates and experts said they expect federal funds that have already been awarded to be paid out, and they don’t expect the Trump administration and Republican-dominated Congress to make major changes to the IRA or infrastructure law, especially given the financial impact those laws have had in Republican-dominated areas.
“We have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars for small businesses and farmers” paid out through the federal Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), not to mention federal IRA funds, that “overall are benefitting Republican districts” during the Biden administration, noted Angela Xu, Illinois Environmental Council municipal engagement manager.
Even if new federal funding windfalls are not available in the future, advocates say the funds awarded during the Biden administration will have lasting impact, combined with state-level programs and funding sources that will continue, and market forces that are making clean energy increasingly competitive.
“President-elect Trump has indicated his intention to roll back IRA programs, but keep in mind that when President Trump was elected last time, he and the Republican-led Senate and House were hellbent publicly on rolling back Obamacare, and that didn’t happen,” said Environmental Law & Policy Center executive director Howard Learner.
“The IRA has supported smart, sensible renewable energy development in red states and blue and purple states,” he added. “There’s no question if President Trump tries to cut back and constrain the IRA, it will have some impact on the pace of renewable energy development and other climate change solutions. On the other hand, it’s very hard to keep better technology from growing. When new technologies come to the market and they are better and cleaner and economically sensible, they tend to accelerate and capture more market share.”
Illinois Shines, the program creating lucrative Renewable Energy Credits for distributed solar, is funded through ratepayer payments — so it is not dependent on federal funding. That doesn’t mean it is immune from federal action, since the federal Investment Tax Credit and the global solar market influence the viability of projects in Illinois.
“There are levers they can pull, through an act of Congress they can change the ITC, which is an important part of the value stack for renewables,” said Delurey, of Trump and his allies in Congress. “And they could deploy tariffs which make the landscape a lot more complicated. The U.S., thanks to the IRA, is making its way towards onshoring and bringing a lot of manufacturing back stateside, but we’re not quite there yet.”
If the tax credit is reduced or solar panels get more expensive because of tariffs, Illinois’s incentives “would probably have to be adjusted accordingly,” Delurey said, with bigger incentives for each project.
“It would just mean fewer megawatts and kilowatts in Illinois. We’d still be deploying solar, but it is sensitive to the price of clean energy.”
Environmental justice
Advocates agree that the Biden administration’s Justice 40 mandate, that 40% of the benefits of many federal climate and other programs go to disadvantaged communities, is likely to be ended or ignored by the Trump administration.
Lower-income and marginalized communities could also be affected by understaffing, delays or rollbacks in federal programs like LIHEAP, which provides energy bill assistance, and energy efficiency rebates for low-income households.
“We can put things in state legislation that supports these communities,” including in the Illinois energy bill being drafted for introduction in 2025, Semanisin said. “Justice 40 is a framework we can incorporate in state legislation as well, to prioritize people who have been historically underserved.”
During his first administration, Trump made significant rollbacks to coal plant wastewater protections, and to the 2015 federal rules governing the storage and cleanup of coal ash. Both are big issues in Illinois, where eight coal plants are still operating, and coal ash is stored in 76 ponds, landfills and other sites, according to an Earthjustice analysis.
Earthjustice senior attorney Jenny Cassel said experts anticipate Trump will again try to weaken the Clean Water Act and coal ash protections. Meanwhile it’s likely the EPA under his administration will do little to enforce the coal ash regulations, which was largely the case before the Biden administration made coal ash a priority.
Illinois passed its own state coal ash rules in 2019, after lobbying by activists who wanted to make sure the rules were at least as strong as federal rules and covered legacy ponds not included in federal rules at the time. In 2024, the federal rules were expanded to cover legacy ponds as well as historic ash and coal ash landfills, but that provision is being challenged in federal court. The state rules do not cover ash historically dumped or scattered around, and they also do not cover inactive coal ash landfills.
Meanwhile the implementation of the Illinois coal ash law has been extremely slow. The law requires each site to get an operating permit with pollution limits that can then be enforced, but so far only two permits at one coal plant site have been issued, Cassel said.
“We keep hearing excuse after excuse” from the Illinois EPA that issues the permits, Cassel said. “‘We don’t have enough people, they’re tied up in administrative hearings, conditions are changing,’ every dog-ate-my-homework excuse in the book.”
“At the federal level, there’s any number of potential ways they could attempt to roll back the [coal ash] rules, or weaken areas that haven’t been fully defined,” she added. “That’s certainly what they did in round one. Illinois will really have to step up into the vacuum of protectiveness we expect at the federal level.”
Local action
Chicago — site of the 2024 Democratic National Convention — has long been a target of Trump’s ire, and Chicago officials during his last administration and today are outspoken about countering Trump’s agenda.
Chief Sustainability Officer Angela Tovar said the city will continue its work on solar, electric vehicles and building decarbonization, as well as centering environmental justice in planning, zoning and enforcement decisions.
“So much of everyone’s local regulations hinge on things like the Clean Air Act and federal standards; there is going to be this question of federal preemption, what home-rule authority do we have?” Tovar said. “Those are still outstanding questions. Every rollback will present its own set of challenges for cities and states. What I am at least grateful for in being in the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago is we do have such robust climate leadership at the state and local level.”
The city’s environmental justice ordinance requires a holistic look at pollution — from traffic and other sources — when industrial development is proposed. That could help protect communities even if federal pollution limits are relaxed. The city has also launched an interdepartmental environmental justice working group, involving “every department that touches air, land and water,” as Tovar said.
The city program Green Homes Chicago funds energy efficiency upgrades for qualifying single- and multi-family homes, which could help fill the gap if federal home rebates are reduced, Tovar noted. Chicago Recovery Plan funding from federal pandemic relief and city bond issuances could help compensate for any funding that might be lost if IRA is undermined, she added.
“The role of cities and states becomes even increasingly more important right now,” Tovar said. “We have an ability to really demonstrate leadership in this moment. For cities like Chicago that have already made some progress, it’s up to us to ensure we’re sharing best practices and working together to really create those safeguards and fortify basic environmental and health protections at a local level. We’re certainly going to maintain our commitment, make sure we are rolling out our programs, and unwavering in our pursuit of environmental justice.”
Kari Lydersen wrote this article for Energy News Network.
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