Evanston, Illinois recently passed the Healthy Buildings Ordinance (HBO),  taking action to address emissions in their existing buildings. The HBO implements a Building Performance Standard (BPS), the first city in Illinois, and only the second city in the Midwest. Evanston, situated 12 miles north of Chicago and home to over 75,000 residents and Northwestern University, voted to approve the ordinance on March 10th, 2025.

It’s been a very busy legislative session in Springfield, and we’re barely passed the halfway mark. The 104th General Assembly convened on January 8th and will adjourn May 31st. The deadline to get a bill through committee was on March 21, so what’s moving? What’s stalled? And what’s an omnibus bill got to do with it? 

On February 24, Evanston, Illinois’ city council voted to make Evanston the first city in the State to adopt the newly available stretch energy code for new residential and commercial buildings. This is a significant step for Evanston to achieve the emissions reduction goals outlined in its 2018 Climate Action and Resilience Plan.  

*Note: This Blog was published on November 13, 2024 and relies on unofficial election results. Official certification of state election results will take several weeks. MEEA will update this blog if there are any significant changes as results are certified.

The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program

In July 2024, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced 25 awardees of nearly $5 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program (CPRG) implementation awards. In early September, the EPA announced another $300 million in grants to 33 tribes and one territory in the final phase of planned CPRG funding. CPRG is one of several funding streams from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act designed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and advance environmental justice.

In our recent blog post Energy Markets 101: Regional Transmission Organizations, Independent System Operators and Energy Efficiency we discussed Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), Independent System Operators (ISOs) and wholesale electricity markets. If you’re not familiar with the RTOs and their capacity markets, go back and read Part 1. In this follow up, we’ll dive into how energy efficiency has historically participated in PJM’s capacity market and recent complaints filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in more detail.

On June 20, 2023, the Village Board of Oak Park, Illinois voted in favor of an all-electric new construction ordinance as part of their building code. This makes Oak Park the first municipality in Illinois - and the Midwest - to pass an electrification ordinance. Electrification was one of the steps identified as necessary to achieve community-wide net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as set forth by the Village in Climate Ready Oak Park. This follows the adoption of a benchmarking ordinance approved in February 2023.

On September 21, 2022, the Chicago City Council passed Mayor Lightfoot's 2022 Chicago Energy Transformation Code, making Chicago the first city in the Midwest to adopt and exceed the 2021 edition of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). This and other decarbonization measures will help the city meet its recently released Climate Action Plan.

It is imperative that opportunities to tackle climate change and create well-paying jobs in the United States exist concurrently. As the country’s economy changes and the prevalence of carbon-free energy sources grows, it has become increasingly important to understand how employment in the energy sector is also growing and changing. The U.S.

Over the past 15 years, utility-run energy efficiency programming has produced significant energy savings, customer cost savings and a host of system-wide and societal benefits throughout the Midwest. Unfortunately, these benefits are not fully understood or recognized by many state legislators and other policymakers. As a result, MEEA and other energy efficiency industry experts must recurringly defend EE policies from those who misunderstand how efficiency is funded, its value and impact for utility customers and its widespread benefits within individual states and throughout the region.