(lively music) - Welcome to "At Issue".

I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you so much for joining us.

When you pay your Ameren bill, you're helping to implement the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.

It's an act that requires Illinois to be 100% reliant on clean energy by the year 2050.

It's 956 pages of bill, and we're going to try to explain that in the next half hour.

First, let me introduce to you Dawn Dannenbring.

Dawn is the environmental justice organizer for the Illinois People's Action Group.

Also with us is Tracy Fox.

Tracy is the Central Illinois Health Community Alliance, and we thank her for being with us.

And then Reverend Tony Pierce is here.

He is the president of Illinois People's Action Board.

Thank you all three for joining us.

- [Tracy] Thank you.

- Let me start with you first, Tracy because we probably should have an overview of 956 pages but an overview of what this bill is trying to accomplish because as I understand it, it takes parts of previous bills, adds new and says self-reliant 100% clean energy, 2050.

- Yeah.

It is Illinois' response to the climate crisis and the impact that it's already having on Illinoians across the state.

The bill includes new incentives for renewable energy, both wind and solar.

It would include both big solar farms as well as individual residential rooftops.

It also recognizes that we can make progress by reducing demand.

So it beefs up energy efficiency programs that are already run by Ameren and ComEd in the northern part of the state.

And it then works on providing an equitable basis in this new clean energy economy through expanded training, through new contractor development and acceleration programs and a variety of inclusive financing mechanisms.

The whole thing is wrapped up with new ways of dealing with the utilities.

The ComED scandals and the bribery indictments that came down there heavily influenced the development of this bill.

It includes unprecedented levels of transparency.

It puts a lot more reporting requirements on the utility, on everything from the granularity of what's happening in communities like Peoria to disclosures about lobbying and reporting on a variety of metrics.

So we are hoping that it is a new day and we have an approach that is citizen-focused that is focused on bringing benefits to the people and especially the people who have been most closed out of the energy economy.

- Dawn, let me ask, because Tracy talks about citizen-focused.

How much input did citizenry have in the development of this act?

- A tremendous amount, actually.

About four years ago, after we passed the Future Energy Jobs Act, which was a predecessor to this bill, we started within a year holding on the ground listening sessions across the State of Illinois.

I know that there was one held in every senatorial district.

Illinois People's Action held 10 of those.

And we started asking people, "What would you like to see in clean energy legislation in Illinois?"

And that's why we started focusing not just on climate, but on equity, as you've said, to include people who have always been left out of every energy revolution or the tech revolution or anything that typically white and affluent folks get the benefit of.

- [Tony] I could add to that, H. - Sure.

Go ahead, Reverend - Tracy mentioned something important when she said new and Dawn expanded upon it when she said equity, and I don't want folks to lose the importance of that.

There's a lot of infrastructure in place from a beneficial standpoint that benefits white folks and it should, no one's arguing that point, but black and brown and poor white folks have been left out of a lot of these economic ways of activity that have taken place.

Tracy mentioned, for example, the digital revolution.

BIPOC, Black, Indigenous People of Color were left out of that.

And in fact, this energy revolution that has begun, the first package of legislation actually took place four years ago.

And from that, that was called FEJA, from that, blacks and brown only got 2% of the revenue benefit from that when BIPOC people are 40% of the population in Illinois.

So part of my job in all of this was to make sure that equity was included broadly across the board and everything, and that not only was it written into the law but mechanisms would be put in place so that it would be enforced on the ground as an example beyond simply workforce, 'cause when we look at the workforce mechanism in place, it has benefited the status quo.

It has not largely benefited blacks, browns and poor whites.

And so we have to look at disruptive mechanisms to make that happen.

- So when you talk about that, that means that there has to be a strong training program.

You can't say we need to have this many minorities working on these projects if they're not qualified.

So how are we addressing that?

- That's an important point.

We've all worked to make sure that the right kinds of ingredients, if I can phrase it that way, are put into the training programs, and I'll let Dawn speak and Tracy speak to the numbers of different training programs that are gonna be out there.

But I'll just say this, there are training programs that will focus, for example, upon returning citizens from incarceration.

There are other kinds of training programs that will focus upon BIPOC individuals.

We here in Peoria are benefited by having the most successful training program under FEJA.

We had the most successful training program to train these new folks, particularly BIPOC people as well as whites.

Our training program was the number one rated program in Illinois, and our training program was a partnership between the training program out of our nonprofit side of our church, Illinois Central College and the Urban League.

That was the number one performing training program, solar training program in Illinois.

- And for the audience's benefit, when you hear reference to CEJA and FEJA, FEJA was the Future Energy Jobs Act that has been supplanted, may I say, by the Climate and Equity Jobs Act, the CEJA Act.

- [Tony] Yes.

- [Tracy] Yeah.

- To the point of training and the hubs, et cetera, Tracy.

- Right.

I mean, FEJA did a great job of getting workers trained and getting them NABCEP certified, which is an important credential for doing solar, but it didn't do a lot to break down the composition of the contractor pool who were actually executing the solar jobs.

And when I got involved talking to Reverend Pierce, talking to other members of our Clean Jobs Coalition, it became pretty apparent that there were people with appetite for far more than just being a subcontractor on a solar project, that there was a real need to elevate BIPOC contractors into prime contractors to people running the jobs, making the decisions, hiring the subs, and that would be the way that we could really begin to build wealth in black and brown communities.

So we designed a set of contractor incubators that would operate in parallel with the hubs.

The hubs are geographic locations, so there'll be one in Peoria and it'll have a paired contractor incubator.

And that will provide both workers and contractors with sort of some, "Get your feet wet, learn the basics of doing solar projects."

Then we have a statewide contractor accelerator program.

And this is for folks that are ready to level up.

We provide them with the capital resources, we provide them with mentorships and specialized training so that these big contracts eventually are going to a diverse contractor pool that looks like the State of Illinois.

- Look, one quick question of Tracy and then please, Reverend, but I wanna make sure the viewers out there are going, "How can I take advantage of this training program?"

Have they started up yet?

- No.

They are in the process right now with the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity getting the administrative side of things set up.

So those should be coming in 2023.

- In 2023?

- [Tracy] Yes.

- Okay.

And Reverend - And Individual individuals who kinda wanna follow the developments that are occurring that may help them get enrolled in these programs, they can always contact ICC about it, they can always contact our church, Heaven's View Christian Fellowship about it 'cause we had a part in the previous program.

They can always contact the Urban League about it.

Those three groups came to gather in the first program.

Now, it doesn't mean that it'd be those three groups only in the next version but they can contact those groups.

I'll say this, Tracy meant NABCEP certified, just so the public knows, NABCEP stands for the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, so they govern the training processes.

And that's important because heretofore, the only groups that were certified to offer that kinda training who students could then take the NABCEP tests to get certified in the industry were colleges and were labor.

We've been notified our group, through our Jobs Partnership Program and the training we do, we've been notified that we're gonna receive certification within the next two to three weeks.

We will be the first non-college, non-labor certified program in Illinois.

I do believe that more will follow, but that is a historic development.

And that is now starting to get this training more to boots on the ground, community development operating groups, and that's really a major development.

- Also to what you were talking about, how do people register on this?

There's two things I wanna say about the hubs.

One is the new hubs coming under CEJA are gonna train people for more than just solar installations.

So you will have broader opportunities in the clean energy industry.

And then the supports that are written into it, even under FEJA, Peoria was the hub that provided kind of wraparound services to make sure that once you started a program, you actually graduated from it, and that was not provided in all of the hubs.

Well, it was so successful that we made sure to write that into CEJA.

So there are wraparound services like childcare or transportation or money for tools or working gear or everything that you need to be successful in a job coming out.

- If I can add to that quickly, when you look at, for example, individuals coming out from being previously incarcerated, these individuals typically come out with just a huge amount of fines that built up while they were being incarcerated, parking fines, other kinds of fines, they come out typically with thousands of dollars of fines.

And these folks can't get a driver's license or anything else until these fines are paid off.

We've been very fortunate here in Peoria that the Secretary of State's office works with us for people coming out to kind of reduce and eliminate a lot of those fines and put whatever's left in a way that they can pay for them and get into these programs.

That's what I'm referring to when I say this stuff has to be devised in ways that are practical and workable, not just theoretical, but they have to be workable.

- And that's why, Tracy, the bill is 956 pages but there's a lot more to come.

The ICC has to make and ICC, not Illinois Central College, the Commerce Commission, has to make sure that they write the rules and regulations for all of this.

- Right.

I mean, I think that the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity will oversee the training programs, and then the ICC will kind of act as the final check because this is all going to be funded by rate payers, the same way that the FEJA programs were.

I mean, it's a tiny charge on people's bill that in the aggregate is enough money to really make a difference and do some stuff that has the kinda services needed to bring folks in but also to follow up on the back, and we don't just turn them out on the street with their certificate.

They've got a credential that's valuable and recognized across the industry.

We have job placement services, and we have incentives in all of the Illinois renewable energy procurements that incentivize hiring these very people, that incentivize doing work with these very contractors.

So to us, that's the pipeline and that's what really is going to make this thing fly.

- And one additional point there that is good for us to know 'cause Dawn spoke about regional or geographic diversity, as the CEO and as other departments are working on this stuff in the legislation was put the concept of having different regional administrators who will govern how it will work within their regions.

Things are done up north in Chicago land differently than in Central Illinois which are done differently in Southern Illinois.

So you'll have typically three administrators working to make sure that those regional diversification issues are addressed properly.

- Let's move from training, Dawn, to a power generation.

This bill requires that private coal plants be shut down eventually.

What are the limitations on those plants right now?

- Well, before the bill, there weren't limitations on the plants.

So it shuts things down in two ways that are important, one, with set dates so that we would be off of all coal in Illinois by 2045 and then with a glide path addressing nuclear by 2050 but it also does it in a way that prioritizes certain coal plants that are in what, at least at Illinois People's Action we sometimes refer to as sacrifice zone communities.

And these are communities that everybody has just kind of turned a blind eye to.

I mean, if you pay attention, you will not see a coal-fired generated plant near a gated community.

Coal-fired power plants and other polluting plants tend to be located in or near communities that don't have a lot of power or neighborhoods that don't have a lot of power.

And the people that live in them suffer many times greater health impacts, asthma, heart problems.

And so this bill prioritizes shutting down the dirtiest plants first in those communities.

- And Tracy, those areas are known as sacrifice zones.

- Yeah, sacrifice zones or there's a more formal designation environmental justice community.

It's a data driven measure, and it looks at various statistics about the community and also pollution rates.

And some of the tops of the worst performing communities are targeted for the first shutdowns.

Now in Illinois, the biggest problem that remains is Waukegan.

It's a largely Latinx community north of Chicago.

They have a power plant that sits right next to the public beach.

It's a working class community.

There is a lot of asthma, and they'll be one of the first to shut down.

- And H, this is important when we say sacrifice.

- [Wayne] Quickly because we only have 10 minutes left in the conversations.

- Oh, I understand that.

I understand that, but a lot of times, we overlook the real impact upon people at the bottom, blacks, browns and poor whites.

80% of African-Americans live in these sacrifice zones.

So that means they suffer the deaths and the illnesses that occur because of that.

And since whites aren't largely affected by that, they don't address that, and we can skip over that in the conversation, but deaths to these families are vastly important.

- Dawn, back to the power generation, there are different rules for municipally owned coal-fired plants, such as City Water, Light and Power in Springfield.

- That's true, that and the plant that is further South Prairie State plant which a number of municipalities get their electricity from.

They have been given a longer time not necessarily because like my organization would have supported that because we would like to see the coal plants being shut down sooner.

But you have to realize, when you pass a bill that is this big, it is negotiated, is negotiated between a number of groups and also in the general assembly.

And so that is one of the things is those plants have been allowed to stay online longer.

- Let's turn to the nuclear power plants.

There is money in the bill for three nuclear power plants to I think it's $694 million over a period of time.

Tracy, can you address the question of the nuclear power plants?

- Well, I mean, it's a reality of putting an energy bill out that tries to reduce carbon as rapidly as possible.

The nuclear plants are legally licensed to operate into the 2030 to 2050 timeframe.

The expirations differ by plants, but the governor was very skeptical given the situation with Exelon and ComEd.

So there was a behind the scenes audit of Exelon's books and the governor and his staff were in on it, some high level representation or representatives from the general assembly were in on it, some consumer advocates from CUB looked at the numbers, and they all agreed that that was the amount of money that was needed to keep those nuclear plants operating in that timeframe, because without that baseload power, we don't really have a way to shut down the coal and the gas, but there is no plan for them to continue beyond their current licensure cycle, at least in any thinking on the part of the Clean Jobs Coalition.

- Let's turn to solar, if we could.

- [Tracy] Yeah.

- We need to address a couple of issues before we run out of our time.

- [Dawn] You bet.

- Dawn, we need to grow solar if we're going to eliminate coal.

- Yes.

- So what provisions encourage you that solar is going to be able to handle that gap when the coal plants shut down?

- Well, for one thing, the infusion of money, I mean there were many more people that requested to be able to build out solar than there was money available before.

So the bill does ramp up the amount that is available through this renewable, the rec process in Illinois.

And Tracy can talk more about that.

But think it as the coal comes down and renewable energy comes up and there are a number of ways that is handled.

So some of the solar projects, like the Illinois Solar for All, which is making sure that solar is available in the low income communities, then there is much more solar that's available in other tranches, as well as wind development.

- Tracy, expand on that, Illinois Solar.

- Yeah.

The Illinois Solar for All is the state's low income program.

It includes residential rooftops that basically for qualifying individuals can be gotten at no cost with ownership turned over in five to six years.

There's a similar program for nonprofit and public facilities, and then there's a provision for low income community solar projects.

And community solar is a neat idea because it lets people who rent, people who live in apartments, people who live in historic homes and can't put up panels, people who live in shaded yards to buy into a solar farm and they're effectively getting their credits for energy supply from that and it comes directly off their Ameren bill.

It's a way to just take control of what you're doing with energy.

- And I wanna talk about prevailing wage, Reverend.

- Yeah.

We can get the prevailing wage, but you asked about solar and growing and how do we ensure that these companies do that?

I'm the only one up here who is a co-owner of several solar companies, so I think I have something important to say on this issue.

We have a solar company called Sunbright Energy that is both NBE certified and approved vendor certified, and these certifications take years to get.

And so we are the strongest solar company, the NBE solar company in Central and Southern Illinois and one of the top three in the state if not the strongest in the state.

And to that end, I would like to share that we won an RFP that was issued by a entity in Upstate Illinois that will entitle our company in partnership with another company to construct a 75 to 100 megawatt system to provide power for 100,000 people in Upstate Illinois at a cost of two to $300 million.

That will provide hundreds of new jobs for people.

So when you talk about, how do we ensure that these jobs go to where they should go, that requires the training as you started the program off with but it also requires on the ground companies that can ensure that BIPOCs get a piece of this action.

- We'll forego the prevailing wage aspect because I wanna turn to Tracy real quickly and talk about vehicles because people can get a financial benefit if they buy an electric vehicle.

And there's also a bill pending to add to this that may include motorcycles.

- That's correct.

The details of how the beneficial electrification provisions will work are not quite ironed out.

There have been a ton of meetings in front of the ICC, but the intent is that, yes, there will be consumer incentives for purchase of electric vehicles as well as incentives for personal infrastructure build out and infrastructure build out around town so that there's a robust network of charging stations.

And I think the important thing here is that as downstaters, we're trying to fight for a good portion of that initial money to go to electrifying school buses and transit, and to make sure that as that infrastructure build out happens, that it doesn't just go to some big out-of-state companies that roll in with a minimum wage crew and put it in but that it is the same patterns as solar that it's giving the benefits to people that we're training in our hubs and incubators to local businesses who are already in the industry or have the skills to level up and do it quickly.

- Before we close out the show, there are CEJA ambassadors.

Can you explain that real briefly?

- I'm gonna kick that to Dawn 'cause she's really the expert there.

- [Wayne] Dawn?

- Sure.

So CEJA ambassadors, there were 100 CEJA ambassadors trained yesterday, and CEJA ambassadors kind of do what we just did here today, talking about the bill, and they can provide trainings to groups, your alliance club, whatever.

They will come into the community, they will come in person, or if maybe you're a member of a church they can come online and train your folks in what CEJA is and how it can impact your community and what you can do to get involved.

- And with that, we have so much more to talk about.

You'll have to continue your conversation at home, but let me say thank you to Dawn Dannenbring, to Reverend Tony Pierce and to Tracy Fox.

Thank you so much for trying to distill this huge bill into a half hour.

We appreciate the conversation.

- [Tracy] All right.

- [Dawn] Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- And we appreciate you tuning in to "At Issue".

We'll be back next time with another edition of "At Issue".

Please join us then.

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