By: Diane Benjamin
If you haven’t opted out of electric aggregation in Bloomington and Normal you are paying than than you could have because both councils chose the higher “green energy” rate.
At the last County Board meeting they did the same thing. The Board voted 16-3 to pay $41,776 more for “green” electricity than not green.
Schools like to buy pieces of paper called renewable energy credits. In other words – they tax you so they can fund investments in eliminating fossil fuels while avoiding the obvious clean energy option: Nuclear.
I did this story about Heartland in 2012: https://blnnews.com/2012/07/26/heartland-cc-home-of-no-transparancy/
See PDF page 119 of the County Board Packet. The documentation for this vote is extremely weak and does not spell out the cost difference for “green” electricity: https://mcleancountyil.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/9640
If Board member Chuck Erickson hadn’t asked, we would not know how much the County could have saved.
If inflation wasn’t already killing your personal finances, government at every level is forcing higher “green energy” on you. It is a hidden tax.
The Board did a voice vote. The only NO vote on the video was by Chuck Erickson. We don’t know who the other 2 were. Just hit play to hear the brief discussion.
In Illinois, we are encouraged to add solar panel to our roof. Part of the incentives are federal tax credits, and part are “Shines Credit”. Shines Credit brokers will pay me for the “green energy” I am producing on my roof, they then sell these credits to entities so, they can claim they are using “green energy”.
A typical government “shell game”!