Jan 17, 2023   SOURCE: BusinessWire

What People Are Saying About ComEd’s Multi-Year Plans That Advance Region’s Economic, Climate and Equity Goals

A wide variety of municipal, business, community and labor leaders from across northern Illinois and beyond today released statements about ComEd’s multi-year grid and rate plans that advance the region’s economic, climate and equity goals.

Neil C. James
Executive Director of Metropolitan Mayors Caucus
"We are encouraged that ComEd's plans will build greater resilience, improve the capacity to transition to clean energy and adapt to climate change impacts. We are pleased to support ComEd's multi-year grid plan."

Joe Duffy
Executive director of labor coalition Climate Jobs Illinois
“Illinois leads the nation in moving to a clean energy economy built by union labor. ComEd's Grid Plan represents an important first step towards the clean jobs future.”

Jack Lavin
President and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
“"As businesses continue to increase their electrification needs, an affordable, reliable, and clean grid has never been more critical. ComEd’s continued investments in a more sustainable system will keep Illinois competitive by providing a modernized grid that can attract businesses to our state and contribute to their performance.”

Michael P. Dunn, Jr
Executive Director of Region 1 Planning Council (R1)
“A modern and resilient grid is a top infrastructure priority for our region and our industry clusters. Industry and residents will further expect our region's future economic competitive advantage as we compete for tomorrow's industry. We are encouraged by and support ComEd's multi-year grid plan as aligned with our own future planning and policies."

Nancy E. Norton
President & CEO of Grundy Economic Development Council
"The GEDC is supportive of ComEd’s commitment to a modern, resilient, and flexible grid. As ComEd pursues these goals, affordability must be a key pillar in their plan."

Greg Bedalov
President & CEO of Choose DuPage
"Reliable, affordable electrical infrastructure and delivery is one of the assets that helps to define our economic advantage, and efforts to strengthen this advantage should be a priority. We support ComEd's grid plan, which includes cost-effective initiatives that will address climate change, grow our economy, advance equity and strengthen our local infrastructure."

Doug Pryor
President & CEO of Will County Center for Economic Development
“Will County CED supports the initiatives in ComEd's proposed grid plan, which seeks to affordably enhance grid resiliency and reliability while enabling renewable energy resources and beneficial electrification. We believe this will better economic outcomes for Will County and will positively impact development in Illinois."

Erich Sanchack
COO of Digital Realty
“Chicago, and in particular Northern Illinois and Franklin Park are critical to Digital Realty, our customer’s businesses, and an important part of the overall global digital infrastructure. Our continued partnership with ComEd and the work they are doing with the grid plan will ensures that not only do our data center facilities deliver on the needs of our global customers, but continue to drive regional economic benefits, and investment in clean energy technologies and continued strong reliability performance.”

Joshua Davis
President of the Will Group
"Over the past 10 years, we have partnered with ComEd on various projects that have transformed communities like the K-Town Business Center in North Lawndale. ComEd's proposed grid plan is a community investment that aligns with our partnership's foundational shared quality of being transformative in the communities in which we operate, and we fully support it."

Joann P. Ornelas-Bauer
Chief Executive Officer of Dynamic Utility Solutions
"ComEd has been a great supporter and partner for the growth of diverse suppliers like ours. We fully support this multi-year plan, which will continue to create jobs and fuel economic opportunity across northern Illinois."

Trisha Knych
VP of Marketing, Corporate Communication & Government Relations of S&C Electric Company
"While we have supplied ComEd with equipment to support their foundational smart grid, preparing for the grid of the future requires additional work that must happen now. When threats arise to our energy system, ComEd is the first responder, and we support ComEd's grid plan for the future."

George A. Williams
Chairman & CEO of PMI Energy Solutions, LLC
"Since our founding in 2012, ComEd has played a key role in opening growth opportunities for our firm and has demonstrated their ability to develop a smarter and more resilient grid to benefit all parties. As a minority-owned company, we stand behind ComEd's plans to prepare the grid for an ever-changing future that will benefit all communities."

Paula Robinson
Managing Member, Bronzeville Partners LLC
"While our collective objective is to ensure that the community and customers receive reliable and affordable service, greater neighborhood stability occurs when we leverage our collective experiences and expertise and create new jobs and new enterprise around these growth industries. This grid plan outlines this type of community collaboration, and BCDP supports ComEd’s grid plan that seeks to create long-lasting jobs and long-term prosperity."

Cohen Barnes
Mayor of the City of DeKalb
“The importance of ComEd continuing to build out capacity for the next datacenter in DeKalb is critical to the success of our continued economic growth. Without adequate infrastructure and a proactive approach to building out capacity, our economic growth will be stifled, and we are thankful ComEd continues to work with the City of DeKalb to anticipate the needs to come.”

Jodi Miller
Mayor of the City of Freeport
"As ComEd is preparing to address calls for a stronger and more intelligent grid to support the ever-growing growth in the renewable energy sector, I understand and support the need for future investment in ComEd's multi-year grid plan. We applaud ComEd's preparation to transform the operations and functionality in the current grid."

Mark W. Szula
President of the Village of Roscoe
"New and expanded clean energy requirements - as well as the increasing demand from expanding the electric vehicle market - require a continued to commitment to growth and improvement. The Village of Roscoe supports the initiatives advanced in ComEd's multi-year grid plan and appreciates the benefits that will come through improved system resiliency and reliability."

Billy McKinney
Mayor of the City of Zion
"We applaud ComEd's focus on equity as a key pillar of the grid plan, in particular focusing on investments and system performance improvements that benefit designated environmental justice communities like Zion."

Danny D. Langloss, Jr.
Dixon City Manager
"ComEd has been highly responsive and provided assistance around the areas of economic development and restoring the power grid to critical facilities and our entire community following extreme weather events, and we support their multi-year grid plan that will enable Dixon's planned commercial, industrial and residential development."

Matthew Deal
Manager, Utility Policy at ChargePoint
“EV adoption has grown significantly throughout the country, and specifically in Illinois, in recent years, and we expect this trend to accelerate in the near term. ComEd’s proposed Grid Plan establishes a strong foundation to support the State’s goal for one million EVs on Illinois roads by 2030.”

John Kenning
CEO First Student
“First Student provides unmatched care and the safest ride to school so when students arrive, they start and end their day with an exceptional experience. We continually seek better ways to do things with innovation and sustainable practices like supporting our districts that are upgrading their fleets with electric buses. We value the investment ComEd is making to support a broad and equitable transition to clean transportation, realizing the benefits to the environment and health of our customers. We understand the importance of V2X technology and the need to continue efforts to upgrade infrastructure. When utilities, manufacturers and providers work together, it’s a win for everyone and the planet.”

Haj Young
Managing Director, Illinois Energy Consortium, Powered by the Future Green Energy Consortium
“IEC Powered by Future Green is focused on helping all schools gain access to electric school buses and clean energy resources. A modern, flexible grid is imperative for schools to reach their clean energy goals.”

Phil Jones
Executive Director, Alliance for Transportation Electrification
“It is now time to spend the necessary time and resources to invest in grid upgrades in order to meet the pressing challenges of enabling transportation electrification infrastructure, promoting zero or low-carbon energy generation, and allowing customers and communities more choices working with the utility. The ComEd grid plan is based on good planning, solid data, and years of experience, but pivots to the future. The plan should enable the utility and its customers to meet the urgent needs of reducing carbon emissions and air pollution through electric transportation, as well as advance other electrification uses in homes and buildings as we decarbonize.”

Daniel Bloom
Public Affairs Manager for FLO EV Charging
"Creating a resilient, flexible electric grid that can accommodate the pace and growth of electrification, along with thousands of public EV chargers funded by these various programs will be critical, especially if the state is to reach Governor Pritzker’s goal of one million EVs on Illinois roads by 2030. FLO is pleased to support ComEd's efforts to create a more intelligent, resilient electric grid across northern Illinois to accelerate the state's transition to an electrified transportation future."

Nate Baguio
Senior Vice President of Commercial Development at Lion Electric
“As the demand for electric vehicles, including all electric, zero-emission school buses grows, it is critical to establish partnerships between elected officials, industry leaders, school districts, and leading utility companies to push toward vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology standards and implementation. We are confident that ComEd’s plan presents a step in the right the direction for a clean energy, zero-emission future that addresses the needs and demands of all communities.”

Daniel Anello
CEO Kids First Chicago
“K1C believes that disrupting a status quo that has left over 200,000 Chicago households without high-speed internet is an essential public policy goal. K1C was pleased to see that ComEd’s proposed grid modernization plan envisions a smart, interconnected grid with a strong fiber backbone that can be used to support state-and-local efforts to help bridge the digital divide.”

Dwayne Douglas
CEO of the QUILT Corp NFP
"ComEd's grid improvements provide a once in a lifetime opportunity for digital equity and inclusion and make a dramatic impact on bridging the digital divide within our communities. These improvements will provide improved networks that drive economic growth and stimulate a new generation of innovations addressing critical needs like digital literacy, workforce development, health care, education and community empowerment. We stand in support of ComEd's grid expansion efforts."

Corey Perry
Director of Government Relations, PCs for People
“The issue of digital equity is an ever important one and we here at PCs for People work daily to develop and deploy initiatives that can help close the digital gap. When we consider endeavors like upgrades of Illinois Century Network, the state's existing 2,000-mile open access institutional fiber network serving marginalized communities across the state, it is critical to have entities such as ComEd be key contributor in tackling issues such as access and the digital divide as a whole. PCs for People is in full support for much needed expansions of affordable broadband and prioritization of digital equity and is encouraged to see ComEd seeking to increase the work being done towards closing the digital divide. PCs for People is glad to have our voice heard as we champion positive progress for digital equity and are glad to see our friends and support the endeavor of our friends at ComEd.”

Amin Khodaei, Ph.D.
Professor at the University of Denver
"My team at the University of Denver has collaborated extensively with ComEd over the past ten years on two innovative and nationally important projects that have helped the company gain a system-level perspective on grid capabilities and shortcomings in hosting a growing penetration of distributed energy resources like solar and wind. At a time that the electric grid is experiencing an unprecedented transformation to address the increasing challenges of climate change, distributed generation and growing customer expectations, ComEd took a proactive approach to embrace innovative technologies, tap into academic expertise through close collaboration, stay ahead of the curve and become a successful model for many other utilities to learn from and follow. ComEd has a forward-thinking vision in leveraging innovative technologies to support its customers, a vision that is required to address the complexities of the ever-more evolving grid, and we strongly support their mission and vision as a pioneering electric utility."

ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NASDAQ: EXC), a Fortune 200 energy company with approximately 10 million electricity and natural gas customers – the largest number of customers in the U.S. ComEd powers the lives of more than 4 million customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population. For more information visit ComEd.com and connect with the company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.