St. Charles faces decision over power supplier
Amid a national push toward clean energy St. Charles faces a decision to either agree to a long-term contract extension with its current coal-reliant energy provider or explore other options.
Roughly 50 St. Charles residents attended a June 24 city council committee meeting on to hear a presentation from representatives of Illinois Municipal Electric Agency.
IMEA is a nonprofit agency that provides power to 32 municipalities in Illinois. St. Charles has been sourcing its power from IMEA since 2004, and is under contract with the energy provider until Sept. 30, 2035.
IMEA is urging St. Charles and other Illinois municipalities like Naperville and Winnetka to enter into a new contract through May 2055.
St. Charles Director of Public Works Peter Suhr said he supports the extension.
“There is really no viable reason to join another joint action agency. There is no viable reason to form a new joint action agency. There is no viable reason for short-term agreements with openness to market volatility and price instability,” Suhr said. “There is, however, one very viable solution, and that is to continue our long-term relationship with IMEA beyond 2035.”
Committee members, however, were hesitant to support the extension mainly due to concerns over sustainability, coal reliance and unclear plans for future clean energy production.
IEMA representatives said sustainability, reliability and affordability are the main reasons the city should extend their contract. Twenty of the 32 municipalities that make up IMEA already have made the long-term commitment, they added.
IMEA president and CEO Kevin Gaden said the agency has been able to provide municipalities with consistently low energy costs, with prices currently 5% lower than they were when St. Charles joined in 2004. IMEA is set to pay off all of its long-term bonds by 2035, which he said would reduce energy costs to municipalities by about 25%.
Gaden also touted IMEA’s reliability, citing an average time of 16 minutes to restore power after an outage, compared to more than an hour with ComEd.
About 11% of the power IMEA provides comes from renewable, non-carbon emitting sources, which Gaden said is the highest of any power supplier in Illinois. Only about 6% of energy provided by ComEd currently comes from non-carbon emitting sources, he said.
That figure for IEMA could reach 30% by 2035 and their goal is to provide net-zero emission energy by 2050, Gaden added.
IMEA owns a 15% share of Prairie State, a coal-burning power plant in southern Illinois that is the largest emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the state and among the top 10 in the U.S., according to a 2019 study by the Environmental Protection Agency.
A timeline presented at the meeting indicates the Prairie State facility is set to shut down half the plant by 2038, cutting the plant’s CO2 emissions by 45%, and fully retire the plant by 2045. IMEA also sources from Trimble County, another coal-burning power plant in Kentucky, which is planned to be retired by 2050.
With nearly 11 years left on the IEMA contract, several St. Charles council members questioned why another 20-year commitment has to be made soon.
“It troubles me that we only have a year to decide on a 30-year contract. That’s a big commitment for residents and that concerns me,” Alderperson Ron Silkaitis said.
IMEA wants a commitment now in order to procure the right amount of energy in long-term agreements with better rates, Gaden said. Without knowing how many municipalities the agency will be serving after 2035, it is hard to gauge how much energy they will need to provide, he said.
The city has until April 2025 to make the commitment, and city officials will continue to discuss the decision in future meeting.