The nonprofit Ecology Action Center [EAC] in Normal has released its third study of greenhouse gas emissions in McLean County, finding those emissions have decreased over the last decade.
EAC used 2022 as its data year for the most recent publication, which said the county decreased greenhouse gas emissions by about 10% since 2008, the study’s first year. A second publication measured levels in 2015 in the county.
That's a drop of more than 200,000 metric tons compared with 2008, the first year emissions were studied in the report, said EAC director Michael Brown.
Brown said those data years are what explain the county’s energy profile and what energy is used when and where in the community “…whether it is stationary energy, which is buildings being cooled, heated, computers, all that stuff, transportation emissions, everything that’s on the road, all these different types of emissions.”
“How much energy is being used, what is the correlating amount of carbon equivalents, metric tons of carbon equivalents…”
Despite improvements to combustion engines and increased use of electric vehicles, Brown said that is not the leading cause of the reduction.
“Where we are seeing that reduction in is what is called stationary energy, and so that is the heating, the cooling, all the equipment that goes inside buildings, both in that community sector and local government,” he said.
That comes from decarbonization of energy generated, so carbon is used less than it was before to make electricity. Brown said over time, the price of natural gas — considered a cleaner-burning fuel — has fallen.
“And a lot of that has to do with hydraulic fracturing making natural gas much more cost effective, so the economics of that have really helped to promote increased usage of gas over coal, but then we do have increased clean renewables being added to the grid as well,” he said.
Findings from the emissions report allow the EAC to move forward with other plans, like the Community Energy Strategic Plan that Brown said will incorporate public feedback for the organization’s ultimate goal — net zero emissions in McLean County.
What is recommended
Juliana Vidal is a project coordinator on the strategic plan, helping to gather what the report recommends to further reduce the emissions footprint in the county.
She said the recommendations are wide ranging.
“So, starting from the top, some of the structural ones were how do we impose or at least facilitate clean energy leadership at the local government level,” Vidal said. “A lot of that means how do we institutionalize sustainability and clean energy considerations.”
Vidal said that comes from making sustainability a common practice in municipal government, so countywide leaders can facilitate their own clean energy ideas.
Of course, the biggest hurdle is funding those ideas.
“But lots of goals also spanned across incentivizing economic development for clean energy transition to the specifics of large buildings, decarbonization, clean energy development, as well as how do we build compact and connected communities,” she said.
There are still existing grants and tax credits, Vidal said, even after notable rollbacks to the clean energy sector by the Trump administration. While those are federal, state commitment is still strong, she said.
“That means that there are existing programs, existing grants that help target some of these key initiatives, and this is really the bucket of what people have known for a long time as to what can help decarbonize,” said Vidal. “Oftentimes that focuses on how do we electrify the transportation fleet, for example, or how do we decarbonize large buildings, which means better energy efficiency, electrification, retrofitting.”
Vidal said Bloomington, Normal and McLean County governments also can take action of their own. Opportunities such as a green fund is one way the communities can leverage money to finance new sustainable projects.
Vidal and Brown noted that state funding has been used to fund energy-efficiency improvements at the McLean County Health Department building in Downtown Bloomington.
EAC is taking public input on the strategic plan draft now on its website.
