Photo Credit: toffehoff

‘We can’t do it as an individual, But four hundred communities aggregating and asking for local wind power and solar power – that’s really powerful.”

Oak Park, IL, is one of hundreds of Illinois towns using their authority to buy electricity in bulk on behalf of its residential and small business customers. So far, most communities have used the policy – known as community choice aggregation – to negotiate for less expensive electricity compared to the default electric utility, Commonwealth Edison. Many have also purchased renewable energy credits with their power, but it’s not clear if the practice is greening or green-washing the power supply.

Learn more about the incremental steps forward with community choice aggregation in Illinois and the potential for much greater collaboration between cities in this interview with outgoing Sustainability Manager K.C. Doyle of Oak Park, recorded via Skype on Mar. 28, 2014.

K.C. is also the founder of the Prairie State Local Government Sustainability Network, providing peer-to-peer networking of municipal officials around sustainability and climate planning.

Apologies for the egregious keyboard noise […]