A HUGE win for the planet 🌎
Dear neighbor,
Thursday evening in Springfield, we passed one of the most ambitious and transformational climate laws in the nation. It's one of the most important pieces of legislation I've voted on in my career.
I just wanted to give you a summary of some of the main points of the bill.
• Right now, 9% of our state's electricity comes from renewables. This bill provides huge incentives for solar and wind, to get us to 40% renewable by 2030 and 50% renewable by 2040.
• Our power generation will be 100% carbon free by 2045, with huge emissions reductions right away as we close most of our dirtiest plants this decade.
• In those communities with closed coal plants, we're investing in a just transition, with incentives to site solar farms in those communities and extensive job retraining and apprenticeship programs.
• We have the strongest prevailing wage requirements for green jobs in the country, by far — all but the very smallest jobs will be required to pay generous, union-equivalent wages.
• And the green jobs have a razor-sharp focus on equity: we'll be creating 13 new workforce development hubs in communities of color across the state to make sure that Black and Latinx workers and business owners share in the green economy.
• We're also not stopping at the power sector. The bill creates a new $4,000 incentive for EV purchases, pushing us toward our goal of 1 million electric vehicles in Illinois by 2030. It also supports the buildout of charging infrastructure, with investments concentrated in underserved communities.
There's tons more great stuff in the bill: new ethics requirements for utilities; financial support for low-income ratepayers; carbon-free schools; new weatherization and energy efficiency programs; and much, much more. Click here for a very detailed breakdown by the Clean Jobs Coalition.
Of course, there's some stuff not to love in this bill. Principally, I think, is that we're subsidizing Exelon to keep a couple of its aging nuclear plants open a while longer. Exelon's a huge, very profitable corporation, and I hate giving them a single penny. But we're giving them way, way less than they asked for. And the truth is, we need nuclear plants for now. It's just not feasible to replace the power they generate with renewables right now, so if those nuclear plants closed, we'd be buying dirty power from neighboring states for decades.
Also, we won't force Prairie State, the big coal plant outside of St. Louis, to shut down completely until 2045. That's a frustrating side effect of their various contracts with cities across Illinois. But I stood with my colleagues in the Progressive Caucus and the Green Caucus to demand interim emissions reductions at that plant, so they can't just keep belching out carbon until then. They'll need to start reducing their emissions in the next decade — or more likely, in my opinion, realize that it's impossible and just close down on their own.
These were compromises I was more than willing to live with so that we could pass this transformational bill. In the end, we're going to invest billions of dollars in our green energy future, reducing our carbon emissions dramatically while supporting historically disinvested communities.
Our planet's in crisis. It's code red for humanity, and the window to act is closing fast. With the passage of this bill, when we look back on this moment in history, here in Illinois we'll be able to say: we acted.
Happy to answer any questions you might have about the bill. Don't hesitate to ask.
Sincerely,
Will
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