As Naperville’s electric grid stands now, a vast majority of its power comes from burning coal. That’s how it’s been for the past 13 years and that’s how it stands to continue for the next decade.
Past that isn’t quite clear yet.
This year, though, the city is starting to grapple with what the future of its electric utility will look like 10 years out, when the contract with its current electric provider is set to expire. Groundwork for the decision is already being laid.
Naperville outsources its electricity supply to an organization known as the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency, or IMEA.
In Naperville, unlike most other municipalities in Illinois, electricity is locally controlled so the responsibility for purchasing and distributing power is at the city level. Taking on that authority alone is no small feat so to keep costs down and spare city resources, Naperville relies on IMEA.
IMEA buys and distributes energy to its members around the state, including municipally owned electric companies like Naperville’s, at a wholesale price.
The snag, from environmental advocates’ perspective, is that almost 80% of IMEA’s energy portfolio comes from coal, a notoriously emission-heavy power source.
Naperville has had a contractural arrangement with IMEA since 2007, which has kept its electricity rates stablized. The current contract runs through 2035 but the city will soon have the option of extending it beyond that year.
At a board of directors meeting in December, IMEA officials publicly shared hopes to extend member contracts by 20 years, through 2055.
A draft of what new contracts would look like has been circulated with members. Final review and approval by the IMEA board is due in this month. Once OK’d by directors, who are composed of various city officials from member municipalities that serve as a liaison to IMEA, contract extension proposals would go out to members for individual approval by March 1.
Municipal governments would then have an open time frame of 14 months — through April 30, 2025 — to execute a renewed agreement.
But with Naperville six years out from any official contract renewal deadlines, IMEA’s urgency begs the question: why now?
The agency says early extensions are necessary to plan ahead for its energy portfolio, which — independent of member commitment — is due for some fairly sizable shifts over the next decade as plans for more sustainable practices statewide, locally-owned utility or not, set in.
Of the near 80% portion of IMEA’s energy supply that comes from coal, about 50% is supplied by Prairie State Energy Campus in southern Illinois and 27% from Trimble County Generating Station in Kentucky.
The state, however, has told Prairie State to reduce its carbon emissions to 45% by 2038 and to zero by 2045 or face retirement as part of legislation signed in 2021 that will phase out all coal-fired power plants across Illinois over the next two decades.
With Prairie State’s staying power uncertain, IMEA needs to identify and plan for alternative energy supplies that can replace resources going offline in coming years, according to Staci Wilson, the agency’s director of government affairs.
“IMEA needs to know how much new power to acquire to serve member needs beyond 2035,” Wilson wrote in an email to the Sun, “so the agency needs to know who those members are that will continue their beneficial relationship with the municipal joint action agency beyond 2035.”
Timely extensions are especially important if IMEA wants to secure the best renewable energy supply deals, Wilson said. Longer-term deals, those that go out 20 years, typically offer 20% to 30% lower pricing than shorter arrangements, she said.
IMEA’s more renewable-driven path forward is laid out in a sustainability plan approved at its December board of directors meeting. The plan was designed as a formalized way to guide IMEA toward a net-zero carbon emissions energy portfolio by 2050, Wilson said.
IMEA lauds the plan as a “living document” that will be regularly reviewed and revised as the renewable market changes and new opportunities arise.
Experts, however, aren’t entirely convinced that IMEA is doing enough to show it is truly committed to reducing its reliance on coal or that continuing on will be beneficial for Naperville.
Paul Bloom, an associate professor of physics at Naperville’s North Central College who has spent years researching climate science, said IMEA’s sustainability plan is “questionable.”
Ten pages in all, the plan was developed by a working group of IMEA board members, including Naperville. It maps out several strategies to help IMEA meet its 2050 net-zero vision. Chief among them: reducing members’ electricity demand; investing in renewables; expanding its battery storage capacity; incentivizing more electric vehicles and charging infrastructure; and pursuing new and emerging technologies.
The last strategy is what gave Bloom the most pause, specifically the plan’s inclusion of carbon capture and storage technology, which involves capturing CO2 from emission sources and storing it deep underground as a way to decarbonize. The technology has yet to be utilized at the scale necessary for the country’s largest power plants.
“Someone who was a little bit cynical might say, well this is a ploy to keep burning coal and to make it seem a little less dirty,” Bloom said.
Holistically, he faulted the plan for not being proactive enough.
Speaking to the prospect of Naperville staying on with IMEA, Bloom said, “Realistically, we’re talking about the worst electricity out there. And it’s a terrible thing to lock people into. … Locking ourselves into (IMEA) for additional time, possibly for decades, seems like a poor choice.”
Maureen Stillman with the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force (NEST), a community organization that has been an official Naperville advisory body since 2019, had similar critiques.
“That is not a sustainability plan that is acceptable to us,” Stillman said. NEST’s biggest concerns stemmed from inclusion of the carbon capture concept and and its overall lack of aggressiveness.
NEST representatives told the city their group opposed the plan, Stillman said, but the city voted to approve it at the IMEA’s December meeting.
Naperville city staff maintain the plan is a good start.
“This is a living, breathing document,” said Brian Groth, director of Naperville’s electric utility. “It is not the be all, end all sustainability plan of the agency. If something comes up in two years, it will be addressed in here. If it comes up in the next six months, it will be addressed here.”
It’s also part of the information-gathering the city needs to make a judicious decision over its energy supply for the long haul, staff say.
Late last year, the city put out a request for proposals seeking a consulting firm that could look into all of the energy options available for powering its grid. As of last week, the RFP was closed and under review, according to city spokeswoman Linda LaCloche.
A consultant’s report will help the city decide the best fit for its electric utility, Groth said.
“There likely is not going to be one single perfect option,” he said. “(But) there is a good fit for the city, and that’s what we need the consultant to work on for us.”
Staff hope to present energy supply options to the city council in the spring. Concurrently, staff also plan to start holding public workshops to educate community members — and elected officials — on the history and future of Naperville’s electric utility.
Workshops are poised to begin in coming months.
