Jennifer Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council, which represents 100 environmental groups, considers Pritzker surprisingly forward-thinking on climate. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I’ve been through, even before this, almost four different governors’ administrations. Governor Pritzker has been the absolute best on environment and climate,” she said.
“He blends an interest and passion for it with [getting] things done and setting goals. It’s really been very impressive,” she said. The strides toward renewable energy are notable, she said. “One of the biggest challenges to renewable energy deployment in the entire country is local permitting. And he has overcome a lot of that. We still have some places to go, but I really don’t have criticisms in the power sector.”
She added: “I didn’t expect this to be our climate governor. And he is.”
Walling of the Illinois Environmental Council said that transportation as well as land use required more ingenious approaches. “We really have not done a great job of land conservation,” she said. Considering the fact that 75 percent of Illinois is agricultural land, “how do we … ensure that farmers are incentivized to sequester carbon through their farming practices? And that part just has never gotten any interest,” she said.
The next two years—including months leading to critical midterm elections—should be “laser-focused on renewable energy deployment,” Walling said.
“We need to go faster on the permitting, whether it’s permitting that happens at the local level, permit disputes at the local level, state agency permitting—we need to go as fast as possible before those tax credits run out,” she said. “We have a deadline now. I think that has to be a priority.”
“In some ways, Trump has given us a roadmap of the goals that we need to hit and when we need to hit them,” Walling said. “There’s no delaying anymore.”
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