I will continue to advocate for Naperville’s position as a leader in clean energy research and utilization in our community. During my first term on the Council, we’ve put Naperville in the forefront of several initiatives that will change the way future generations use, conserve and produce energy, and protect our environment. Our projects have garnered federal grant money and widespread support from the business community, and will be an avenue for job creation well into the future.

Smart Grid

Since the city started providing electric service to its residents in 1890, Naperville has been a leader in energy efficiency, reliability and cost savings. Our Smart Grid initiative continues our commitment to our residential and business customers. We are the only Illinois municipality awarded a grant ($11 million) from the US Department of Energy to modernize our city’s electrical system with advanced metering so residents and businesses can see their energy use in real time. This capability will allow users to voluntary shift their electric usage to non-peak times if they choose and improve the reliability of our entire system. We stand to save $34 million in the next 15 years because of the foresight and pioneering nature of this project. Our Smart Grid initiative is being showcased as a model for communities across the country. Smart Grid also prepares us to provide expanded fuel choices for our citizens down the road, including the capability to providing affordable electricity to plug in hybrid vehicles.

Clean Fleet

I’m proud that Naperville has partnered with nearby Argonne National Laboratory, which has provided us with potential opportunities to test and deploy clean vehicles employing new energy efficient technologies.

Green Fuels Depot

We are currently embarked on a project to make productive use of landscape waste and brush using a gasifier that converts this organic waste material into an exhaust steam that can be fed to a turbine or engine to generate electricity, that hydrogen can be separated from to fuel vehicles, and that can be converted to ethanol for improved gasoline mileage in city vehicles. By wringing usable fuels from bio-waste, we’ll save on the cost of hauling these organic waste materials to far-off composting facilities, where the methane generated from composting has a greenhouse gas emission impact that is 20 times worse than that of the carbon dioxide produced by the green fuels depot. We have been working with Naperville’s own Packer Engineering in pioneering this project, and have received $1.5 million in U.S. Department of Energy funding.