By Mavis Bates, Sierra Club, Valley of the Fox, Aurora GreenFest
The city government of Aurora is resuming our Municipal Aggregation Program with an all-green, renewable, energy plan. It is a great way for Aurora’s residents and small businesses to switch over to clean 100% wind and solar energy at the same price as ComEd. We get the added benefit of knowing that we are helping to save the environment by using energy that does not come with the pollution caused by burning coal to make electricity. We are helping to maintain resilient and sustainable ecosystems, improve air quality, and slow down climate change.
Municipal Aggregation means that the city government of Aurora is purchasing electricity on behalf of all of our residents and small businesses and using that buying power to bring down the cost of purchasing clean energy. If you want to see what other plans cost right now, you can go to www.pluginillinois.org and compare prices. ComEd’s price is $.07224 per kilowatt hour, the same price that we will pay, but we will get clean energy instead of the polluting and dirty coal energy that ComEd uses. You will see that other renewable energy plans cost considerably more that ComEd’s rate. The significance of this aggregation program is to help the environment at no extra cost to us. That’s two wins for Aurora.
The best part of this program is that we residents don’t have to do anything to participate. All of our homes and small businesses have been automatically included in the program. We are still ComEd customers, because ComEd still will own the wire that comes to a house, repair it if it breaks, and the bill still will come from ComEd. ComEd does not make any money on the production of energy. It just passes it through to us at the same whole sale price that it purchases it, so it doesn’t hurt ComEd. In fact, it helps ComEd, because it is mandated to make sure that Illinois is using 25% renewable energy by 2025. There is a way to opt-out if we want to, but why would we? We can keep good, old, ComEd and have clean, green, energy at the same time.
In the words of our deputy mayor, Chuck Nelson, “Aurora has been and continues to be a leader in environmental sustainability. This aggregation program will provide green renewable energy for Aurora residents at the same cost as brown traditional energy.”
We all can be proud of Aurora’s Municipal Electric Aggregation Program. This 100% renewable energy program will help us create a cleaner, safer, healthier environment for ourselves and our children.