All City Buildings Now Use 100% Clean Power To achieve its climate goals . . .

[Judi Lynn]

All City Buildings Now Use 100% Clean Power To achieve its climate goals, the city helped finance the largest solar farm east of the Mississippi.

January 7, 2025
By Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, Grist

It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity to power Chicago’s more than 400 municipal buildings every year. As of January 1, every single one of them — including 98 fire stations, two international airports, and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — is running on renewable energy, thanks largely to Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm.

The move is projected to cut the carbon footprint of the country’s third-largest city by approximately 290,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year — the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road, according to the city. Local decarbonization efforts like Chicago’s are taking on increasing significance as President-elect Donald Trump promises to reduce federal support for climate action. With the outgoing Biden administration doubling down on an international pledge to get the U.S. to net-zero emissions by 2050, cities, states, and private-sector players across the country will have to pick up the slack.

Chicago is one of several U.S. cities that are taking advantage of their bulk-buying power to spur new carbon-free energy development.

“It’s a plan that gets the city to take action on climate and also leverages our buying power to generate new opportunities for Chicagoans and the state,” said Angela Tovar, Chicago’s chief sustainability officer. “There’s opportunities everywhere.”

Chicago’s switch to renewable energy has been almost a decade in the making. The goal of sourcing the city’s power purely from carbon-free sources was first established by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2017. His successor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, struck a 2022 deal with Constellation, an electricity supplier, to purchase the city’s energy from the developer Swift Current Energy beginning in 2025.

More:
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/chicago-keeps-its-new-years-resolution-all-city-buildings-now-use-100-clean-power/

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1. K&R