To be clear, the scorecard is not a measure of clean energy deployment. That’s why Texas has a failing grade despite being a solar and wind giant, for example.
“Texas does have a lot of renewable energy, but it really comes down to who’s owning and controlling it. In Texas, it’s all being done by the utilities,” said Maria McCoy, a researcher with the Energy Democracy Initiative and author of the scorecard. “The state just isn’t doing the kinds of things that give communities their own opportunities to self-determine.”
McCoy says the benefits of policies that support community power initiatives can include both household-level energy savings and wealth-building opportunities, but they extend beyond that to benefit the community through things like more local jobs and resiliency in the face of extreme weather events (a topic Canary Media explored in-depth in its Power by the People series.) A report by the institute also found that places with more local ownership of clean energy resources tend to be more supportive of clean energy in general.
So what is Illinois — the sole state to earn an above-average grade — doing right?
“It’s hard to pinpoint just one thing,” she added. “It’s really a combination of little components of different policies. […] It has a good net-metering policy [and] good community-solar policy, so it is checking a lot of boxes. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. Illinois is getting a B, and it is the highest-scoring state.”