Chicago Mayor Releases Roadmap For Transitioning To 100 Percent Renewable Energy By 2035 (pv-magazine-usa.com) 124
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual has released a roadmap for transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2035 and to an electric Chicago Transit Authority bus fleet by 2040. The move is especially noteworthy as there are 11 nuclear reactors in operation in Illinois. From a report: Yesterday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel unveiled the Resilient Chicago plan, which with action number 38 commits to "transition to 100% clean, renewable energy in buildings community-wide by 2035." The deadline for all city government buildings to be powered solely by renewables, first established in 2017, has been brought forward to 2025. The policy has been introduced as part of environmental group the Sierra Club's "Ready for 100" campaign, and Chicago is the largest city to join the effort to date. (Editor's note: While Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has announced his city is on a path to 100% renewable energy, it is not clear if the formal goal is 100% renewable or 100% zero-carbon, and LA is not included in the Sierra Club's Ready for 100 list.)
The language of the Resilient Chicago text says "clean, renewable energy," and the Sierra Club does not include nuclear as part of its Ready to 100 campaign. The new policy is a particularly interesting move for Emanuel, once considered one of the more pro-nuclear politicians in the Democratic Party, and a man who brokered the deal that created Exelon. Were Chicago to include nuclear in a 2035 target, it would require either buying power from existing plants instead of investing in new generation, or starting new nuclear plants within six years. Given the high cost of nuclear compared to wind and solar, few decision makers are contemplating that option.
The language of the Resilient Chicago text says "clean, renewable energy," and the Sierra Club does not include nuclear as part of its Ready to 100 campaign. The new policy is a particularly interesting move for Emanuel, once considered one of the more pro-nuclear politicians in the Democratic Party, and a man who brokered the deal that created Exelon. Were Chicago to include nuclear in a 2035 target, it would require either buying power from existing plants instead of investing in new generation, or starting new nuclear plants within six years. Given the high cost of nuclear compared to wind and solar, few decision makers are contemplating that option.
Re:Sierra Club (Score:4)
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Social capital and lobbying dollars (mainly the second).
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Except most people don't have a 100+ year track record and supposedly 3 million members that, ostensibly, agree with the "party" line.
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The Sierra Club, these days, seems to be an agent of land developers. (Whether wittingly or unwittingly, and whatever they might have been long ago, is immaterial.)
As of a few years back, when my wife checked their government-mandated public records, more than half their donations came from developers.
The algorithm seemd to be:
1. Developers contribute to the Sierra Club
2. The Sierra Club harasses and sues a farmer. The farmer adjusts the drainage on a spot that puddles in the rainy seas
Total bullshit for higher power bills (Score:2)
They're going to basically spend all this money paying for power from "renewable" sources.
Yet, in all likelihood, they're going to be delivered locally generated power from nuclear sources.
And exactly HOW many cars are on the road in Chicago EVERY DAMN DAY?
Also, Metra DOES have one Electric district train setup.
But the majority of their trains are diesel.
So shortsighted...
If they were REALLY looking to make big gains, they'd go after low-hanging fruit in building retrofits.
Remember, roughly 40% of ALL energ
Re:Total bullshit for higher power bills (Score:4, Insightful)
And exactly HOW many cars are on the road in Chicago EVERY DAMN DAY?
Exactly! We should only ever focus on one cause, even if transportation and power generation have equal shares in the problem. This is just another attack against the clean and healthy power industry at the expense of our ludicrously cheap power.
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No. I'm simply pointing out that the issues in Chicago are multifaceted.
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No. I'm simply pointing out that the issues in Chicago are multifaceted.
No you weren't. If you were then you really need to learn to write. Start by not emphasizing your incredible disagreement using carefully selected all-caps. You can then continue by not saying if they "really" wanted to make a difference they'd do something else.
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So now I'm supposed to posit an argument however YOU decide I should.
Pfft. Fuck off.
Re: Total bullshit for higher power bills (Score:2)
On average, renting is cheaper than owning. That home ownership thing you said is a line thatâ(TM)s been sold to a couple of generations now, presumably to spur the construction, real estate and mortgage industries, but it has the side benefit of forcing people to save money as well. Owning the home you live in is a pretty effective forced savings plan.
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On average, renting is cheaper than owning.
Where is renting cheaper than owning? Seriously, citation please. I rented for 12 years & finally got enough cash for the down payment to buy a condo. The bubble burst a few years later & in that working class neighborhood, it finally came back to what I paid for it just last year.
I'd been renting it out since 2013 as I got married & moved. Lost my tenant so I sold it for just a few K more than I paid. What does this mean? I got a big fat check out of the deal that I would never have got if
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Some of it is a tradeoff.
Yeah, marble countertops, rainfall shower room, hardwood floors.
Or you initially furnish more modestly, split the difference on your physical plant and wind up with a home that isn't going to require enormous monetary input that goes right up a flue or rots out in 5-10 years.
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They're going to basically spend all this money paying for power from "renewable" sources. Yet, in all likelihood, they're going to be delivered locally generated power from nuclear sources. And exactly HOW many cars are on the road in Chicago EVERY DAMN DAY?
Also, Metra DOES have one Electric district train setup. But the majority of their trains are diesel.
So shortsighted...
If they were REALLY looking to make big gains, they'd go after low-hanging fruit in building retrofits. Remember, roughly 40% of ALL energy demand in the country is for HVAC load.
Take a thermal camera and look at most Chicago buildings. They leak heat like a sieve. Basically this means that excessive amounts of money are being spent trying to keep these buildings at livable temperatures, because they're losing heat via conduction and convection.
Simple changes in building codes for new and retrofit construction, along with incentives to do so could yield massive decreases in energy CONSUMPTION.
To be fair, just because there are lots of polluting cars in Chicago does not mean they should not switch to renewables. That said, you are right, the whole switching to renewables project would go a lot faster and be easier if they offered tax breaks (or some other form of incentive) for people who insulate their houses since the less houses leak heat the less power you need and the slower demand for power grows. As for the cars, I think the pollution from gasoline cars will probably solve itself, particul
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Like money, electricity is fungible. (Score:2)
They're going to basically spend all this money paying for power from "renewable" sources.
Yet, in all likelihood, they're going to be delivered locally generated power from nuclear sources.
When the energy from renewable sources and nuclear reactors go into the same grid, how do you identify which energy was pulled out?
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Bingo.
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When the energy from renewable sources and nuclear reactors go into the same grid, how do you identify which energy was pulled out?
That's easy, the renewable energy costs twice as much.
I keep hearing on how renewable energy will dominate the world because it is cheaper than coal. Well, then why do I keep getting these letters in the mail from the local utilities that want to charge me more for "green" energy? If it's cheaper than coal then they should be sending letters on how if I switch to "green" energy that my electric rates will be reduced.
Wind and solar are not cheaper than coal. If it was then they wouldn't need government su
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Simple changes in building codes for new and retrofit construction, along with incentives to do so could yield massive decreases in energy CONSUMPTION.
Simple? Maybe for you. For property owners, it's an unfunded mandate, basically modern day slavery.
Which is why I think they way to do that is offer incentives, rather than mandate improvements, to reduce consumption. If a property owner doesn’t want to participate then they don’t get any of the incentives. Building owners get to weigh the incentives plus reduced energy costs vs. retrofit costs and decide what they want to do.
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Why the fuck didn't you just make things simple and penalize the people who aren't doing what you want them to do from the start?
Presumably because the previous generation was too stupid.
Re:Total bullshit for higher power bills (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's not a tax or a fine, it's an incentive! Honest!"
It's a tax. Why can't the tax-and-spend types ever be honest about that kind of thing?
When you get down to it, if you want people to upgrade their buildings, then you have to make it worth their money and time. In many cases, a simple education campaign would help. If you can show that a building 60 years old can save, I dunno let's pick a number, 25% in energy costs over the year with a $X investment, then you don't need to force people to do anything. Many will do it on their own.
Unless, of course, you're poor.
You see, poor people are - imagine this - poor. They don't have the money. They can't just dump thousands of dollars into new insulation and other materials. They can't get a loan to do it and, if they could, they would spend more in interest payments than the original project. So, the idea is to jack up prices on people who already can't afford much and certainly can't afford to upgrade things? Yeah...
And then, what about the energy involved in producing the new materials, installing it, stripping out the old stuff, and disposing of it? What about the waste? Every building in the city? I've seen how fast those union workers do their jobs.
I get the intention. We want people to have energy efficient homes. I do too. Over the long term it is better for everyone. But you can't just wave the Magic Wand of Regulation. It's not that simple. Keep jacking up taxes? You can, but remember: the wealthy can live anywhere they choose. They're wealthy. And when taxes get too high they will leave in droves. Illinois already has massive debt problems. They can't afford to sacrifice any more blood dolls.
We can make all the magical pie in the sky plans we want, and there is a place for dreaming up ideals as something to shoot for, but you still have to fund the damn thing.
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Assuming, of course, that $X is less than 25% of your energy costs over the remaining lifetime of the building.
And yeah, poor people aren't going to be in on that game. Unless the government offers low interest loans to poor people to do so. Which will require that the city government b
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Passive House and Net Zero have been around for decades.
The problem is inertia in the building trades.
And the fact that a house that costs you a quarter of your current bills isn't as sexy as something with marble countertops, oak trim, wood floors, and all the home-bling-bling.
And again, nobody is forcing anyone to build new or retrofit at any given point.
The idea is that, when you do, you simply conform to the newer standard.
And in an ideal situation, because of the way this type of building trades off, t
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Why the fuck didn't you just make things simple and penalize the people who aren't doing what you want them to do from the start? Because people are idiots and don't realize when they're being fucked over.
Because the science and technology behind this sort of thing has come a LONG LONG WAY in just the last 30 years.
The average building age in Chicago is 32+ years.
And the code minimums have gone UP quite a bit in that time.
Something built in 1990 has only slightly better thermal and air sealing characteristics than a turn-of-the-century barn.
You can build a modern home in the same style, yet require less than half the HVAC plant and less than a quarter of the actual power consumption.
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That really isn't necessary. I'm the condo president of one of the largest buildings in downtown Chicago. Every other year, we have an energy audit done on the building. We basically implement the plan that has the highest return. No coercion is required.
The people that ran the building before it became a condo were not very good managers. Our first couple projects had a 180 day payback period! But now we are looking at payback periods of 15 years or so, which is still worth it if you finance the work.
Goo
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Note: I said changes to codes.
Not "We're inspecting you and you need to come up to this in X-days."
That's forced "New Green Deal" bullshit.
I'm talking improvements in code-minimums for new construction and retrofits.
So, if it were to change TODAY, exactly NOBODY would be immediately affected.
The act of submitting a new building for construction, or for a retrofit project is what would trigger this.
If they decide to NOT move forward, there's no residual onus on them to make the changes anyhow.
Like right now,
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When you make new construction more difficult and more costly, existing apartment and housing prices also increase as a result of the decline in new construction to compete with it. See also, SF Bay area.
There is no such thing as renewables (Score:2)
The sun is not renewable.
They need to start calling these energy sources "Non Carbon Energy"
Which also includes fission based power plants and geothermal.
Re: There is no such thing as renewables (Score:2)
In all practical sense Sunâ(TM)s radiative energy is renewable, as long as thereâ(TM)s Sun. Itâ(TM)s about the primary energy source. Some deplete by using them and some donâ(TM)t. Sun, wind, geothermal etc are not depleted from the use.
There will likely be big advances in how renewable energy sources are tapped and how the energy is stored. There hasnâ(TM)t been so much push before for that, so theyâ(TM)ve been mostly left out of focus.
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Thank you, Mr. Pedantic, for your insightful contribution to the discussion.
Maybe lower the murder rate first? (Score:2)
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You think the mayor of Chicago would be more concerned with the city's murder rate right now, instead of energy generation.
The reason they have such a murder rate in Chicago is because of their sophisticated gang member recycling program. Arrest them, and then put them right back out on the street so they can commit more crime. It's super efficient!
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Re:Maybe lower the murder rate first? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, you are less likely to be murdered in Chicago than you are in rural America.
Citation needed.
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Kill yourself faggot.
easy when you apparently don't have to pay for it (Score:3)
Chicago has $9 bn in assets, and $42 bn in liabilities. It is a city so poorly run that they have been losing population steadily and in pretty sizable numbers.
Pray, tell: who will pay for this, or are they just going to sell unicorn rides?
Bold plan with substantial costs (Score:2)
So Fucking Easy! (Score:1)
It might sound hard, even impossible to accomplish such an aspiration. Most especially when you consider all the buildings still running on 100 year old or more heating systems.
But, it's fucking easy to do. They just reclassify/redefine what renewable energy is/means. It's a growing trend in the greenwashing field.
Remember how using paper was a bad thing and everyone was encouraged to save a tree? But, now it(wood) is a renewable resource that we need to use more of. Think about it... By the same measure, c
Lame duck mayor (Score:5, Interesting)
Lame ducks proposing radical legislation (Score:1)
And we're going to switch to renewable soon one way or another. Besides dwindling reserves of the cheap, easy to get to oil (and you won't like what it does to the water table to get to the hard stuff) if we don't do something about climate change we're all gonna die. Not in the changed climate, but from the massive war over food and water that's gonna happen. If we're lucky we won't use too many nukes. But trust me, there will be
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There is a cheaper, healthier and easier answer to this question but fat ass Americans won't hear it: Vegetarianism...Even more reason to push for vegetarianism over renewable energy sources.
Agreed. A properly marinated and roasted vegetarian is cheaper and better for the environment.
Let's just hasten the death of IL.. (Score:3)
All this "green energy" zero emissions stuff is fine and dandy, as long as it's not a mandate. Once you do stupid stuff like this, making it mandatory, you do two things.
1. Make it more expensive. You heard me right "green" is NOT free, it's actually much more expensive than current alternatives, namely Natural Gas. This economic truth is rarely understood much less acknowledged and the effect of this on the local economy is measurable and not in a good way. When energy becomes more expensive, people, industry, and jobs leave.
2. Spend lots of money on revamping, renewing, changing technology. When you change all your vehicles to electric, it means that you have to git rid of the current fleet and by a new one. In this case, government will have to replace all their vehicles, from the police cars all the way though city buses. This means junking parking lots full of expensive things which where supposed to last another few decades. It also means buying all the infrastructure to support the new energy sources, which is in itself expensive.
So, what does all this mean? In the end, it means the already brisk pace folks are leaving Chicago and the state will continue to increase as they ditch Illinois for it's high taxes, high costs of living and lowering standards of living. It also means that the city of Chicago will be adding greatly to it's already unmanageable debt, either raising taxes or lowering services to compensate and either of those accelerates the departure of the people who are just trying to live a better life.
Illinois is heading to being like Detroit on a state wide basis. Keep it up you loonies.. Just shoot yourselves in the foot, both hands and the head and get it over with. A quick death is better than a long lingering bout in the ICU.
Save the planet, just go ahead and commit suicide if you like, just do it quick. This slow meandering death is bad for the environment. Just set up the "death" centers and start up a lottery to decide who gets to visit because the way I see it, to get what you want we need to cut down the population by about 50%, world wide...
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1. Make it more expensive. You heard me right "green" is NOT free, it's actually much more expensive than current alternatives
You don't say! Green is more expensive? Man it sounds like you DEFINITELY need to mandate it then otherwise no one will do anything and we'll happily crap on our own future health and survival because hey, gotta save that dollar man!
2. Spend lots of money on revamping, renewing, changing technology.
Errr... Good.
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You must not be from around Chicago... Everybody knows that the city AND the state are on the brink of bankruptcy and the population of both are in a rapid decline as those who have the means are leaving, taking their money with them. Which leaves mostly the poor and middle class, who DON'T have the money to do this green thing, so it's going to just destroy their standards of living... Again.... But that's the breaks in Illinois these days, the taxpayer is getting reamed while the government is blowing mo
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You must not be from around Chicago... Everybody knows that the city AND the state are on the brink of bankruptcy
Interesting. This exact argument has often been used to justify why poor 3rd world shitholes should continue to pollute unabated because it's "cheaper". My my how Chicago has fallen.
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Sometimes, you gota do what you gota do.
When your town is bankrupt, you got to stop spending somewhere somehow. Adding expenses should not be undertaken lightly or for vain reasons. You have to stop running on the emotional "Yea, I like that idea" and start running on the "We cannot live w/o that" for awhile. Chicago needs to major on things it *needs* like police, fire services, keeping the roads clear and in good repair and picking up the trash. It needs to have a commitment to paying off it's massiv
We're pushing 9% unemployment (Score:2)
The only downside to stuff like this (e.g. the "Green New Deal") is it benefits _everybody_. If you're one of the 1% that's no good. Also, if you're a bitter old "I got mine fuck you" coot (and to be blunt,
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If they actually meant it, they'd set a 20-30 year time horizon, which would cut the cost of the project by more than half, since it can replace infrastructure as it nears maximum lifespan.
If they actually meant it then they'd set a two year goal to go with the 20 to 30 year grander plan.
Without that goal in the time frame of an election then there is no accountability. Maybe they could make a 4 year plan, to fit in a term of POTUS. Maybe a 6 year plan to fit that of a US senator. Maybe an 8 year plan like JFK did in 1962 to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely. That would fit in the two terms that a POTUS could serve.
Any plan beyond the term in office of the person making the
Re:We're pushing 9% unemployment (Score:4, Informative)
Reading through AOC's “Green New Deal” document as published by NPR [documentcloud.org], there seem to be a few additional downsides for everyone, including banning:
But don't worry, they'll guarantee:
And hey, they even have momentum:
But yeah, Executive orders instead of laws was bad when Obama did it and it's still bad if Trump does it. Funny how I don't recall you opposing Obama's use of them to magically create full blown immigration programs, though.
Fantasy (Score:3)
Chicago set cold weather records this year, how the fuck will you heat homes with renewable energy by 2035?
I'm not saying there are no ways to carry renewable energy forward in time or across the country for winter use, but not by 2035. District heating with massive hot water reserves, power to gas, cross country HVDC distribution networks ... that's all much further out.
Even then any sane state should still have fuel based backups and a strategic reserve of fuel.
End times (Score:2)
Well, say goodbye to Chicago. A weakened city, brought to its knees. I wonder how many people who will freeze without proper heating will vote Demo/Green after this. Go Nuke or Go Broke.
cough (Score:1)
It won't work... (Score:2)
The guy can promise rainbows and unicorns and get the same result.
Chicago is called the Windy City not because of the climate, it's called that because of all the hot air from politicians that inhabit the place. They simply cannot build enough windmills to run the entire city and keep it affordable. There will not be any city in the USA that can run on 100% renewable energy except with the same funny bookkeeping that many businesses use to make the same claim. If they reach this goal it will be because t
Clean? Where? input? output? (Score:1)
Well where does that nuclear energy come from? Does the nuclear plant errich fuel as well or is that done in some third world country where lives do not matter? Then what do you do with the spent nuclear fuel?