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Chicago Mayor Releases Roadmap For Transitioning To 100 Percent Renewable Energy By 2035 (pv-magazine-usa.com)
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.
best you read the summary again, its the Chicago Mayor making the running on 100% renewables. They join the "ready to 00 club" like you do when you join the "mile high club"
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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.
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.
Ezekiel 23:20
"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.
Love sees no species.
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?
-Styopa
It’s pretty hard to go 100% carbon neutral without either access to reliable renewable power like geothermal or hydro, or by adding nuclear power into the mix. Many so called 100% clean renewable counties, provinces or companies manage that goal by using offsets, i.e. what they can’t generate directly with solar or wind, they buy from external wind and solar providers. The thing is, those providers sell as many MWh of green power as they actually generate, but the actually green power you buy it from them might well be generated by coal or nuclear at that moment. So this model breaks down when everyone tries to go green.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Regarding the homicide rate of big cities, Chicago is number 4, with Baltimore, Detroit, and Memphis ahead of it. This is for the rate, not the number of homicides. And when you consider that Chicago has about 1.5 times the number of residents as those other 3 cities combined, there is no question why Chicago is considered the murder capitol of the US. High rate, high population, high number of murders.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Rahm is quitting because his office sat on a video of a cop shooting an unarmed black guy a dozen times and the community was justifiably pissed. He can promise free trips to Mars if he wants but he's out in April and no one wants his endorsement - the ultimate lame duck.
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...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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, code for insulation in walls in Chicago.
Walls (existing): R13
Walls (new): R21
New values would be determined (honestly, in a place like Chicago, going beyond R21 in walls doesn't yield terribly better performance.
There would be codes for things like air-sealing and elimination of cold bridges through the structure.
And remediation of things like this don't have to be hideously expensive or involved.
There are inexpensive ways to get this stuff done, even on a macro scale like a high rise or skyscraper.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
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 plan is worthless. Maybe I can believe a 20 year plan if it's got milestones at every 2 years or so. That way we can know they are serious. If they miss the 2 year goal then they must explain why it was missed and how they plan to meet the next goal in another 2 years.
You want to get to 0% carbon in 30 years? Okay, then tell me you will get a 3% reduction in the next year. Then another 3% the year after. And so on. If you can't do even as little as 3% this year then why should I expect 100% in 30 years?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Reading through AOC's “Green New Deal” document as published by NPR, 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.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain