La Grange officially adopted the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus (MMC) Climate Action Plan (CAP) for the Chicago area on June 10.
Passed unanimously, the vote links the Village with MMC’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and battling climate change.
“The benefits of adopting the CAP include partnering with the MMC and other larger national agencies in working to measure regional greenhouse gas data, assess regional climate risk, and align efforts,” Trustee Tim O’Brien said in introducing the measure. “Currently, 42 municipalities and counties have endorsed the CAP through resolution.”
The CAP plan of action can be explained in an 182-page plan that can be found on the MMC website, mayorscaucus.org, which describes its goals.
“The intent of the Priority Climate Action Plan is to enable jurisdictions throughout the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to seek federal funding under the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG),” reads the plan’s intro, going on to urge obtaining other grants to battle climate change.
While the CAP stressed obtaining grant money and the measure passed the Village Board without comment, one member of the audience wasn’t so sure about the financial effects on the Village.
“Just reading this to me it seems like there’s a lot of open-ended commitments and a lot of platitudes, and I want to know if the Village has done anything to assess what commitments to this plan is going to cost the Village and what it’s going to cost individuals,” Tim Conrad said during public comment. “These mitigation goals, they’re fine, but it says reduce 50 % by 2030. How are we going to do that?”
Conrad asked the same about decarbonization efforts in energy and transportation, asking “How are we going to do that? It just seems like this is very open-ended and nobody has done, as far as I know, any cost-benefit analysis on this.”
President Mark Kuchler acknowledged that the Village had not done a comprehensive study of the cost if all the goals in the plan were achieved.
“However, when we do individual things, we always look at ‘what is the cost’” he said.
Kuchler gave the example of permeable paver blocks at Village Lot No. 3, where the additional costs to use permeable blocks were almost offset by a grant from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD).
“Recently we went out to purchase electricity and there were different plans,” he said. “We chose one that had less of an environmental impact and there was a cost to that.”
Village Manager Jack Knight explained that the additional cost was offset by savings using the Village’s aggregate purchasing power.
“With those savings, we are able to purchase RECs (renewable energy credits),” Knight said. “That’s one example of several where we would look at options where we can reduce our environmental footprint without a cost to our residents.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
