Prepare dinner County in Illinois lately celebrated the completion of a photo voltaic mission at its Skokie courthouse. County officers held a ribbon reducing this week together with photo voltaic installer Ameresco.
“We set formidable targets to fight local weather change, and we’re attaining them,” mentioned Toni Preckwinkle, president of the Prepare dinner County Board of Commissioners. “These photo voltaic installations enable us to generate clear vitality on-site, scale back air pollution, decrease working prices, and transfer nearer to our purpose of powering County services with 100% renewable electrical energy.”
Two of the county’s courthouses — Skokie and Markham — had been among the many first services to obtain photo voltaic installations following the discharge of the Clean Energy Plan in 2020. A further 17 photo voltaic initiatives are at present in growth and, as soon as accomplished, are anticipated to extend the county’s renewable vitality utilization to roughly 32% of complete electrical energy consumption throughout its buildings. The county flagged 14.2 MW of doable photo voltaic capability on government-owned websites.
The Skokie courthouse helps 1.3 MW throughout its rooftop and parking zone. Markham courthouse has an 806-kW array.
The Skokie photo voltaic mission additionally advantages from rebates and incentives, additional enhancing price financial savings past the vitality generated on-site. Alongside photo voltaic enlargement, Prepare dinner County continues to spend money on vitality effectivity enhancements — together with lighting upgrades, boiler enhancements, cooling system replacements and constructing management system upgrades — to additional scale back vitality use and emissions.
The photo voltaic installations assist the targets outlined in Prepare dinner County’s Clear Power Plan, together with attaining a forty five% discount in greenhouse gasoline emissions by 2030 from a 2010 baseline, reaching carbon neutrality by 2050, and utilizing 100% renewable electrical energy throughout county-owned and operated services by 2030. Prepare dinner County has already surpassed its interim emissions discount purpose, attaining a 52.7% discount up to now — a milestone acknowledged with a 2025 Nationwide Affiliation of Counties (NACo) Achievement Award.
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