On September 29, 2017, the Illinois Power Agency (IPA) released its Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan (Plan) to implement renewable energy goals set forth in Illinois’s Future Energy Jobs Act, which went into effect on June 1. Together, the new legislation and the Plan, among other things, make significant modifications to Illinois’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) goal of 25 percent of retail electricity sales sourced from renewable energy by 2025. The Plan sets forth procurement programs designed to meet the state’s annual RPS targets until 2030 and will be updated at least every two years. These changes significantly expand renewable energy development opportunities in Illinois—by some estimates, leading to the addition of approximately 1,300 megawatts (MW) of new wind and nearly 3,000 MW of new solar capacity by 2030.

Expanding the Illinois RPS

While maintaining the same 25 percent renewable energy sourcing goal, the Future Energy Jobs Act functionally increases the state’s RPS target because Illinois’s RPS standard previously applied only to customers buying power through a utility’s default service, not customers taking supply through alternative retail suppliers or through hourly pricing. According to the IPA, in recent years, only 30-50 percent of potentially eligible retail customer load actually received default supply services, while competitive class customers (including larger commercial and industrial customers, which represent approximately half of total load) had no default supply option. Given this transition, meeting Illinois’s RPS goal of 13 percent of retail electric sales in the state sourced from renewable energy for the 2017–2018 delivery year will require the IPA to procure on behalf of the state’s electric utilities an additional 7.5 million renewable energy credits (RECs), which will gradually increase to a forecasted procurement of 31.5 million RECs for the 2030–2031 delivery year. One REC represents 1 megawatt hour (MWh) of generation produced by an “eligible renewable resource.” Eligible resources include wind, solar, thermal energy, biodiesel, anaerobic digestion, biomass, tree waste, landfill gas and some hydropower. Many other states, including California and Massachusetts, utilize RECs to demonstrate compliance with the state’s RPS program. (more…)