Illinois Renewable Energy Access Plan 2024

Brattle experts have prepared a renewable energy access plan for the state of Illinois. The Illinois Commerce Commission recently approved the plan.

The plan is organized around five strategic elements:

• Strategic Element 1: Findings and recommendations that supplement state policy goals and identify gaps in the current status quo.
• Strategic Element 2: Incentives and enforcement mechanisms that may be needed to support competitive investment in a reliable mix of resources throughout Illinois’ transition to 100% clean electricity.
• Strategic Element 3: Opportunities to equitably manage land use in renewable development and coordination with transmission development.
• Strategic Element 4: Strategies for maximizing the use of existing transmission infrastructure and proactive planning efforts around future needs to provide the necessary transmission cost-effectively and with reduced barriers to renewable development.
• Strategic Element 5: Opportunities for leveraging regional electricity markets and trade to access the most efficient resources, avoid emissions leakage, and maintain reliability.

The Illinois Commerce Commission’s order approving the Renewable Energy Access Plan (available here) includes the following guidance:

• Adopt Level 1 and Level 2 REAP Zones (Strategic Element 3)
• Direct Staff to continue working with both regional transmission organizations (“RTOs”), PJM and MISO, for purposes of tracking greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions and leakage (Strategic Elements 1 and 2)
• Direct Staff to submit information regarding the Level 1 REAP Zones to MISO and PJM for purpose of transmission planning (Strategic Element 4);
• Direct Staff to work with PJM and MISO to perform headroom analyses (Strategic Element 3);
• Direct Staff to continue its involvement with Organization of PJM States (“OPSI”), PJM, Organization of MISO States (“OMS”), MISO and FERC to improve transmission planning and the interconnection processes in both RTOs by incorporating adopted Level 1 REAP Zones and improving the mechanisms to access and redeploy the transmission headroom created by retiring fossil resources, (Strategic Element 4);
• Explore further development of transmission infrastructure in Illinois, and possibly neighboring states) with consideration to the legal and policy considerations associated with PJM’s State Agreement Approach (“SAA”), (Strategic Element 4);
• Continue to support MISO’s existing proactive transmission planning and advocate for PJM to adopt a similar strategy (Strategic Element 4); and
• Advocate and promote clean energy markets in PJM (Strategic Element 5).

The full report, “Illinois Renewable Energy Access Plan: Enabling an Equitable, Reliable, and Affordable Transition to 100% Clean Electricity for Illinois,” can be found below.