What's New

In the summer of 2007, the Illinois General Assembly passed a renewable energy standard for Illinois, requiring that 25% of the power sold to Illinois households and small businesses be generated with renewable energy sources by 2020. This tremendous victory for clean energy was the result of years of work by the Illinois environmental community, and will put Illinois on track to tap into our vast, clean wind power potential. Now Congress must act to put the entire nation on track to achieve the same rate of progress.

Background

Renewable power technologies such as wind, solar and biomass, are not the stuff of science fiction. They are available now and they can provide reliable, affordable electricity without harmful global warming pollution, air pollution, or radioactive waste. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that we could generate 20 percent of our electricity just by using the wind energy technologies available to us today.

Unfortunately, today, more than 99 percent of the power sold to Illinois customers is generated by coal-fired or nuclear power plants, both of which produce large amounts of dangerous pollutants. There is no safe disposal option for radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants, which will remain deadly to humans for thousands of years and is currently stored on site at reactors throughout the state. Coal-burning power plants are the largest industrial source of the smog that has caused more than a dozen unhealthy air pollution action days in Chicago this summer. In addition, mercury, which has contaminated the fish in lakes and rivers across the state is a byproduct of burning coal in plants that lack modern pollution control equipment.

The renewable energy standards passed last year in Illinois will gradually increase the amount of power that Illinois utility companies sell to residential and small business customers to 10 percent by 2015 and 25 percent by 2025. Three quarters of the renewable energy requirement will be met with wind power.

Illinois is one of 25 states to have adopted such standards. In combination, these renewable energy state standards will avoid the emissions of 134 million metric tons of global warming pollution per year by 2020, and are already cutting this pollution by more than 10 million metric tons per year.

We are urging Congress to follow the lead of the states and pass a national renewable electricity standard. The benefits of a national standard, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, would include:

• Creation of 185,000 new jobs in renewable energy development;
• Investment of more than $66.7 billion in new capitol;
• Saving Americans more than $10 billion on their electric bills.