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Chicago keeps its New Year's resolution: All city buildings now use 100 percent clean power (grist.org)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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To achieve its climate goals, the city helped finance the largest solar farm east of the Mississippi River.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Its not to say that new renewables arent good. It's just dishonest. Take a look at this paragraph:

Chicago alone has agreed to purchase approximately half the installation’s total output, which will cover about 70 percent of its municipal buildings’ electricity needs. City officials plan to cover the remaining 30 percent through the purchase of renewable energy credits.

So it's not "using 100% clean power" It's literally just earmarking (and funding)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Sometimes it's hard to explain negative numbers in real world contexts, but credits are real impact to total coal/gas demand.

If the credits are used to fund someone else buying renewable energy in lieu of fossil fuels, then the impact is that fewer fossil fuels are consumed.

So if I pay someone $10 to buy solar energy instead of coal they were otherwise going to buy, while I buy that same amount of coal, then the net effect is zero additional demand for coal. You can say that it's just an accounting exercise, but the real world effect is actually real.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

But how would you expect that a city can achieve "using 100% clean power" without earmarking? Should they run their own, independent power grid?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Should they? No. Need they? Yes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

The important difference is that the power is allocated to a specific small subset of very public buildings rather than a municipality or even a neighborhood.