Good morning, everyone.

Today is July 8th, 2026.

Welcome to our planning building zoning and environment committee.

In addition to being able to attend in person, remote attendance has been made available to the public via Zoom at the link on the agenda.

This meeting is being recorded through Zoom.

Her county board rules and the open meetings act.

Attendance via remote means is permitted for qualifying reasons as long as the majority of the committee members are physically present.

But I don't think we have anybody today who needs that, right?

Okay.

Um we have a physical quorum present.

Okay.

Before we get into business items on today's agenda, we are observing a moment of silence in memory of our friend and colleague, Lake County Board Vice Chair, Dr.

Mary Ross Cunningham.

Vice Chair Cunningham served the residents of Lake County for more than two decades as a member of the Lake County Board.

Mary was a tireless advocate for people experiencing homelessness, affordable housing, criminal justice, equity, and opportunity for all, and a steadfast advocate for her community.

And I just want to say this committee, there were certain things we do that really meant a lot to Mary.

Our Housing Lake Initiative was something really important to her, bringing more affordable housing to our county.

And you know, Mary, she was tenacious, she was compassionate, and she would do anything to help her neighbors and constituents, everyone across the county.

She was very dedicated to what this board does to our mission.

Please join me in honoring her life and service in Lake County and keeping her friends and family in a moment of silence.

Okay, Member Frank, can you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Here.

Member Campos.

Member Frank.

Member Kinesnik.

Vice Chair Peterson.

Member Schlick.

Member Wasick.

Okay, thank you.

Do we have any addenda to the agenda?

No addenda to the agenda.

We have any public comment.

No public comment.

Okay, no chairs' remarks.

Any unfinished business?

Yes, we have one item for unfinished business.

Okay.

We welcome Krista Barkley Braun.

Good morning, Krista Brown, planning, building and development uh deputy director.

Um the applicant for this uh particular case has withdrawn.

Um, so no further action is needed by the committee.

Okay, thank you very much.

That was 8.1.

Under new business, can I get a motion for the consent agenda?

Motion by member compost, second by member Wasik.

Any questions?

Okay, all in favor.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Okay.

We're going to regular agenda 9.2.

Committee action amending the final plat relating to lot 12 of the Daringwood subdivision.

And we are welcoming Deputy Director and Zoning Administrator PBD and E Krista Barkley Brown and Planner PBD P B and D, Frank Olsen.

Can I get a motion, please?

Motion by Member Schlick, second by member Keniznik.

Okay.

Good morning.

Uh good morning, members of the committee.

I'm Frank Olson, the assistant planning and zoning manager with planning, building and development.

And I'll be presenting a Daringwood subdivision plat amendment, which is a petition to relocate deed restricted open space on lot 12 in the Daring Woods subdivision.

The Daring Woods subdivision is located in Lake Villa Township, west of Illinois Route 59.

The subject property, lot 12 is located in the southwest corner of the Daringwood subdivision.

The petitioners of this plat amendment are John and Carol Bates.

The deed restricted open space is located on the western portion of the property to the rear of the residents.

The applicants are proposing to remove two areas comprising of 1,079 square feet of open space west of the house, corresponding with an existing pool and an existing shed.

They're proposing to replace it with 1,082 square feet of new deed restricted open space further southwest of the house.

The proposed plat amendment will allow the applicants to continue to use an existing shed and pool located within the deed restricted open space.

It will also allow them to improve the existing pool with a new deck.

The proposed plat amendment will result in a net gain of open space area.

These are two applicant provided photos showing the area to be added as deed restricted open space and the area around the existing pool that will be removed from the deed restricted open space.

Staff recommends approval of the proposed plat amendment.

There have been no objections from any government entities, adjacent property owners, or the HOA.

There are minimal natural resources present within the open space areas being removed.

The amendment will result in a net increase in the total amount of open space and the proposed new open space will remain contiguous with the existing open space area.

At this time, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the proposed plat amendment.

Member Frank.

Thank you, Chair.

Is that the normal requirement if somebody was seeking relief from a restriction that we would expect to see an equal offset?

It's not um it's not a requirement, but it's strongly recommended that if they are rather than just removing open space and reducing that, that there's uh a swap somewhere on their property if it can be accommodated.

So in this case it can be.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Okay, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay, motion passes.

Thank you.

Okay, I think you're staying.

There's no director's report.

There is no director's report today.

Okay.

We are going to 9.4.

Sustainability programs manager Robin Halgram.

Resolution approving a memorandum of understanding between the Delta Institute and Lake County to advance the goals of Lake County's urban and community forestry strategic plan.

Can I get them?

Do we need a motion for those who do?

Okay.

Motion, please.

Motion by member Campos, second by member Wasick.

Good morning.

Robin Holgram, sustainability programs manager.

So the Delta Institute is a nonprofit organization that collaborates with communities to solve complex environmental problems.

They approached Lake County to partner on a grant project that they have that addresses opportunities identified in the Lake County Urban and Community Forestry Strategic Plan that was passed earlier this year.

The memorandum of understanding creates a partnership between the parties for Delta to conduct county and municipal tree plan reviews, two virtual presentations on trees and related topics, a one uh one in-person training at a site in Lake County, and one tree planting event at a site in Lake County to serve as a demonstration site through the extent of their grant program through 2027.

Under this MOU, Delta will serve as the managing partner.

They will be leading the work to design and implement the strategies that achieve project goals in Lake County.

And under this MLU, Lake County will serve as an implementation and thought partner, actively collaborating with Delta to co-design, execute, and advance those strategies and help align local partners around our shared priorities.

This collaboration sets up Lake County to lead, support, and scale regional urban forestry action.

In particular, there's an early strategic action from the urban and community forestry strategic plan that says to we want to convene a countywide urban forestry coalition to bring together municipal staff, nonprofits, professional organizations, and private sector partners.

And so this relationship would provide that base foundation without a without requiring additional funding from the county for 2026 or 2027.

Any questions on that?

I'm very excited about this.

We've been talking about this for years, trying to get this, these jump started, these tree programs.

And it sounds like this is such a win for us because this organization will manage a lot of our initiatives that we wanted to put in place.

So that's very exciting.

Um and I think it sounds like they'll be able to hopefully entice our different municipalities around the county to join in these tree planting programs.

Right.

And do they give grants to the municipalities to plant the trees?

I believe they're there, the holders of the money.

So it's not like giving subgrants to the communities.

It's kind of similar to how we had done our tree planting program where they will pay for the installation of the trees.

Amazing.

So maybe the municipality will pay for the trees.

For the tree maintenance over over time.

Okay.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Any questions?

Member Wasick.

Thank you, Chair.

And Robin?

Yeah, I know we were in the midst of doing a tree survey of seeing which areas really needed the trees.

How does this interface with that project?

Or are they going to be coordinating it?

So in that urban and community forestry strategic plan, we have a priority heat map of these are the areas in which we want to prioritize.

So we're going to be reaching out to those communities specifically and say, hey, what can we do to help you take advantage of this grant?

We really want to be able to work with you to get these free trainings to get the this free, these free trees in the ground.

So I'm curious about the phrase thought partner.

So they are advising us on where to plant more trees or the trees that we've already designated or so.

This is completely separate from the ARPA funded tree planting program.

That is still entirely our system.

This is a new set of grant dollars that is that they have already won, they have already secured as an independent organization.

They're asking our expertise.

What do we think we should where do we think those trees should go?

Where should this training happen?

And so that's kind of how that relationship is working.

So last question potentially, how many more trees will we be planting in addition to what we already thought we were going to be planting?

I think they're looking for uh about a hundred or more additional trees was was the estimates that they had they had given me.

Um so not quite to the you know, the the power and impact that the ARPA program was able to do, but um uh an ability to continue funding tree planting in public sites now that our ARPA dollars have have been expended.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay.

Um when will this uh project launch with them?

Fall 2026.

Okay, terrific.

Um, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Moving on to 9.5.

Motion passes, by the way.

Uh, 9.5 is a resolution to support and endorse the community solar clearinghouse solution program organized by the Metropolitan Mayor's Caucus and the Illinois Power Bureau.

Can I get a motion, please?

Motion by Member Knighnick, second by member Wasick.

Robin Holgram, Sustainability Programs Manager.

So this is a resolution endorsing community solar clearinghouse solution or CS Squared.

Uh, that program was organized by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus and the Power Bureau.

And this is a program that assists residents with finding eligible community solar developments to subscribe to.

The subscription shows up as a discount on your monthly Comed bill through solar bill credits.

And the program is designed to ensure participants are paying less for electricity than they would without the subscription.

The community solar developments are off-site of a resident's home, but are somewhere within the commed region, meaning that the subscriptions would help encourage solar power development in our local area.

Community solar is an important opportunity for residents living in multifamily housing or in homes that are unable to install solar on site to be able to benefit from renewable energy.

Residents are already eligible to participate in community solar subscriptions and the CS Squared program.

However, a county endorsement can provide a trusted, uh trusted voice to let them know that a community solar offer is credible.

Under the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act and the CEGA and the Illinois Shines program, developers can receive state-backed financial incentives that make building these larger ways highly profitable.

And the CS Squared program provides no direct financial investment from participating communities.

So this is at a no cost to the county.

Yeah, that was a question I think.

I think so.

In this program, that's amazing.

Is this something that we can also so you can do it for your home?

Yes.

And municipalities can do it.

You can do it for any of your comet accounts and of your utility accounts.

So is this something we could advertise in our newsletters to people so people know about this?

Um any questions?

Member Wasick.

Thank you, Chair.

And will the mayor's caucus also be promoting this thing?

They do currently, yeah.

Okay.

I mean, to our residents as well.

I know they've been active in this for some time.

Yes, they they created the program a while ago, um, and they've had a few municipalities uh endorse the program previously.

Uh, we would be the first county to be able to do so and um target our our our residents specifically.

So we're kind of putting our stamp of approval on what they're doing, and they will actually excuse me, do the outreach to our residents, say, hey, you know, we can save 20% on your power bill, and this is how you can do it, right?

Right.

Okay, thanks.

So they're also gonna advertise it in there.

So somewhat similar to like the switch together group by program that we endorse.

It's kind of a similar idea.

Okay.

Members.

Thanks.

Thanks, Chair.

Robin, is there like a landing page like with a page like FAQs and stuff where you can direct people to learn more about this?

Yes.

Like, is that going to be on our website or is it gonna are we really gonna rely on like the mayor's caucus to get it out there?

Where can I like direct somebody if this is something they're interested in?

Where can they go to learn more about it?

So there is an individual landing page already on the MMC website for this program specifically.

I think we would include information about it on our sustainability page, similar to how we do the solar, the switch together solar program, and say, hey, this is a thing.

Here's our unique uh our unique landing page, our unique, you know, Lake County branded um outreach materials and things like that.

But that that would still serve as as the home base of information about the program is is with the MMC.

With them.

Okay, perfect.

Because that's where, you know.

I'm always curious how we how we direct, because I can't answer these questions.

Right.

Um, but I can easily direct you somewhere, you know, as a conduit.

So perfect.

Thank you.

As a follow-up, we can send you.

Well, I'll send out a link to the landing page for everybody.

That would be excellent.

Thank you, yeah.

And then if we could have something short in our newsletters about the program so people could learn more about it and have the landing page in there.

I think that would be great.

And then if they were interested, it would tell them what you know how to proceed.

Right.

Okay, terrific.

Any other questions?

All right, I'm excited about this.

I mean, I feel like we're finally, we know we're moving forward with a lot of the different environmental priorities we've been working on.

It's great.

Okay.

Um, all in favor?

Aye.

Okay.

Motion passes.

Moving on to 9.6.

It's a presentation on annual greenhouse gas inventory for the year 2025.

So we can start Robin Hallgram, sustainability programs manager.

And I'm Carl Hughes, Energy Programs Manager.

Uh, today we are presenting on the results of the greenhouse gas inventory for 2025 and the difference in emissions since our baseline year of 2017 for Lake County operations.

I'll be rec uh, I'll be covering a lot of the data in regards to our emissions.

Uh, and Carl will be coming in for uh a few slides to talk about some new energy insights.

All right, so starting off, uh, what is a greenhouse gas inventory?

It is it quantifies the amount of heat trapping gases that have been released by human sources within a defined boundary over the course of a year.

And so staff have been utilizing the ClearPath software uh from 2017, 2022, 23, and 2024.

Um we to complete this inventory.

Um, it's the most popular plat.

We use this platform.

It's the most popular platform for local government agencies with hundreds of users across the United States, including uh more than 10 in the Chicago region.

Uh and greenhouse gas inventory, it's an important metric uh that's lets us measure progress towards our policy goals, but it doesn't tell us exactly why numbers are the way they are.

So it's only one piece of the puzzle.

In 2020, the Lake County Board set a number of targets for us to reach for greenhouse gas emissions, landfill waste, renewable energy, new building standards, public reporting, and local collaboration, all having goals for improvement by the year 2040.

And here are all the goals as listed in the original resolution.

And today we are measuring our emissions with our eyes set on two of those goals.

By 2030, reducing our greenhouse gases by 50% from the baseline.

And by 2040, reducing greenhouse gases by 90% from the baseline.

Here are some definitions that are helpful to understand when discussing greenhouse gases.

CO2E, uh that is the abbreviation for carbon dioxide equivalent.

It expresses the impact of different kinds of greenhouse gases in terms of the amount of CO2 that would create the same amount of warming.

So for example, methane is 80 times more potent with warming compared to carbon dioxide.

So whatever methane the county might emit needs to be converted into the equivalent amount of CO2, giving us one number to work with.

Scope one covers emissions from sources that an organization owns and controls directly.

So when we burn natural gas to keep this building warm in winter, we count that as a scope one emission.

Scope two is emissions from sources that an organization causes indirectly through energy use.

So when we choose to have these lights on, we're taking responsibility for the emissions necessary to create the electricity.

And then scope three, other indirect emissions that are not included in scope two that occur as a result of operations.

So typically these things are a lot harder to quantify and aren't usually recorded in an operations emissions inventory.

But our software does allow us to measure employee commute patterns.

So we make the effort to create commute surveys with our employees.

And at this time and at this time, we do include employee commute in our as our as a scoop through scope three emissions.

Are there any clarifications I can make at this point?

Yes.

Scope one and scope two.

They are very so we are not making electricity through like burning natural gas or anything on site right here.

A power plant or a nuclear plant or a community solar will make electricity off site and then put it into our wires here.

So what a lot of um what we do is we take credit for the emissions that are being made off-site for the electricity that we're using.

So that's the scope two.

And scope one is it's coming, it's gasoline from our cars.

It's natural gas in our basement.

It's the super super, we are doing the burning ourselves.

Anything else?

Okay.

Okay, so here's the full breakdown of our emissions for 2017 and 2025.

In 2017, Lake County produced 35,823 metric tons of CO2E.

And in 2025, oops, sorry, that should be 25.

Lake County produced 29,000 and 73 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

And the ClearPath system breaks up our emissions into these different categories: buildings and facilities, streetlights and traffic signals, our vehicle fleet, employee commute, and water and wastewater treatment facilities.

So since our baseline year, we've seen an 18.8% reduction in our emissions.

And actually, I have some really good news about the power of building net zero.

These numbers did not account for the ROC's solar array production.

So we actually did better than we thought.

By including renewable energy from the ROC, we actually had a 22% reduction since 2017.

And so each of these categories has gone down since 2017, excluding our vehicle fleet, which has increased.

And our three largest categories in order are buildings and facilities, employee commute, and vehicle fleet.

So now we're looking at the uh individual breakdown for these different sections.

So how have these reductions been occurring?

Uh, we're gonna take a look at what's changed from 2024 to 2025.

Uh, we're no longer looking at 2017.

We're only comparing 24 to 25.

Our buildings and facilities uh stayed the same.

Uh, didn't didn't go up as much due to the ROC's solar production.

Uh, but our electricity became less green uh from constellation, who we buy our energy from.

There, there um our electricity became less green since last year.

We did end up using more natural gas, most likely because 2020 was a colder year.

Uh 24 was very unusually warm.

Um, the rock did come online in the middle of the year, and we look at net zero um across the board for an entire year.

The CPF solar array came online and reduced the amount of electricity that we needed to purchase from the grid.

And ongoing construction at DEP Key necessitated more electricity than usual.

So our usage did go up, but thanks to the ROC's solar production, um, we didn't see that many changes.

So we're really hoping that these numbers will come down even further for 2026.

Our street lights and traffic signals emissions stayed the same.

Um, and these numbers are in our new energy report, uh, have been added to the buildings and facilities numbers, but those those numbers have been essentially stable.

Our vehicle fleet emissions went up.

We drove more miles in 2025 than in 2024, but we used our current EV vehicles less.

So we drove an extra 82,000 miles, but we drove 6,000 fewer EV miles.

Um, there were higher than usual snow plow call out requests during 25, and there wasn't any change in our driver efficiency score.

So a lot of those, a lot of those increases were due to just additional miles being driven.

Our employee commute emissions stayed the same.

Uh the average, so since 2022, our uh commutes have become shorter.

Fewer people are driving alone, but it's still a really high number with 93% of drivers are driving to work alone.

Um, a greater percentage of our drivers are driving EVs.

And we know that there's an overall average of 2.36 days per week that are working from home.

And our wastewater treatment facilities emissions stayed the same.

And this is because the number the same number of households being served has has remained the same.

So that really hasn't changed too much.

And so if you notice, I was able to describe the increases for buildings uh and the changes for buildings and facilities with a lot more of specific situations.

And there's a reason for that.

We have our friend Carl here who's been doing a lot of work that allows us to get a lot more granular with our emissions tracking.

Um I'm gonna turn it over to him to describe a little bit about what we've been learning about how our buildings and facilities are shared by departments, and which buildings do we need to be paying the most attention to in this category.

Great.

Uh thank you, Robin.

Uh so as Robin mentioned, we now have some new information that has been developed for the energy report.

This information allows us uh to have a better understanding of where energy is used and subsequently where emissions are produced.

The chart to the right represents energy consumption by department for the years of 2023, 2024, and 2025.

The public works department is one of the county's two largest energy energy consumers and represents 40 to 44 percent of total county energy use.

The facility and construction services department is one of Lake County's two largest energy consumers, typically representing 42.5% of Lake County's total energy usage.

The health department is the third largest energy consumer among the county's major departments and accounts for approximately 10.7% of Lake County's total energy usage.

The Department of Transportation is the fourth largest consumer of Lake County's four major departments, typically using 4.8% of the county's total energy usage.

Thank you.

Furthermore, energy use is also highly concentrated among a relatively small number of facilities.

The top 10 facilities account for over 67, or sorry, 76% of countywide energy use.

The top five account for 61%, and the top three facilities alone account for nearly 50% of all energy use consumed by counting operations.

Those top three facilities are the Des Plains Water Reclamation Facility, the Babcox Justice Center and Work Release Tower, and the admin and courts buildings A, B, C, and D.

So this helps provide a bit of additional insight, which I'll re review further in my presentation.

For now, I'll hand it back to Robin.

Thank you, Carl.

So we're where to next.

And so here's a list of projects that are currently slated to progress during 2026 and 2027.

Uh Lake County has finished of its first energy report, which establishes the pillars of an energy program and develops a strategic energy plan with buildings and facilities, our number one source of emissions.

Uh this information will be crucial for narrowing in on very specific engineering and architectural needs to transition to a more green building portfolio.

Utilizing EECBG funds to complete energy assessments, will give us the tools to plan energy efficiency projects, energy generation projects, and electrification projects.

And either in fiscal year 26 or definitely in 27, staff hope to begin subscribing to community solar, our utility counts to community solar to save money and work to help promote uh solar development in our region.

Um and most importantly, we're trying to maintain that holistic approach where everyone is expected to do something to meet these goals.

And it might be your own way of getting to work or helping promote the efforts of others, uh, but it's going to mat everyone's coming together, still going to matter to hit that 50 and 90 percent.

Um, as I said previously, inventories like these, huge metric to see how we're progressing.

Um, but there's a lot more to the story than just those base numbers.

Um every spring and summer, this information gets generated to help us give more clues about how we're making progress and where we're lagging behind, uh, and find out who else needs to be brought into the conversation to make bigger changes.

Um so that that is all here, and um we're ready for your questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Robin, I just wanted to dig a little bit further into some comments you made earlier.

You said that the energy we're getting from Constellation is less green.

Does it mean they have more coal-fired plants that we're buying power from?

Or you know, I have to say it was really confusing to me too, because they they increase the amount of like uh renewable development that was in like their their mix, right?

They give us the report each year on what their mix of energy was.

And it changed a little bit, and it was just it was just higher for this year.

And it changes every year.

So it's kind of a mixed bag of what their sources are going to be and what their impact is going to be.

But I was also surprised to see it change that much.

So I'm just curious, because I thought that Constellation bought a lot of Comed's nuclear plants.

They do.

It is significantly, it is still constellation is still significantly more green than the baseline uh Comed grid or the greater E-grid.

So it's our numbers are still better than they would have been if we had not worked with them.

Okay, and you also said that people are driving EVs less, and what would account for that?

We have some suspicions.

We don't know exactly for sure.

Um there's a chance that some of our app our oldest EVs were uh being avoided being driven due to maybe needing a battery uh replacement because they're over over 10 years old at this point, some of some of them.

So that's as that's a suspicion.

Um, but um otherwise, otherwise it's it's unclear.

Do we need to revisit our um our fleet and and the buried life and I buried technology has changed quite a bit in time?

Right.

So yes.

So that is a big focus for us at CAO at the moment is tackling these these fleet emissions specifically.

Okay, thank you.

So it's it's is it still our intention to try to switch over to electric vehicles at some point?

Yes, and as EV is kind of that umbrella term, so some of them would be the fully battery electric, you need a charger in order to do it, but it also includes plug-in hybrids and traditional hybrids.

So just trying to maximize the gallons of gas used coming down.

So if there is so kind of having kind of having the mix together.

So if for some department they say we don't feel like we're gonna be able to be be able to conduct our operations successfully with a battery electric, then you go with the hybrid, but there's still significantly less gas being burned.

So do you also feel like since there's been less um rebates available for consumers to buy electric vehicles?

Do we feel like that's affected the amount of purchase for that?

I'm not sure about our county fleet vehicles.

For I'm we are submitting, we are creating our new commute survey for 2026 for our employees this fall.

So I'm going to be able to have even more data of like how have those have those numbers changed since 2024.

So I could include an extra question of were you able to, you know, if you did make a new purchase, would this make a difference for you?

Yeah, I'd be curious about for our employees.

I do think that was a good enticement for people in the last few years.

Right.

Member Frank.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh great work as always.

Thank you.

I'm just curious in terms of the energy and greenhouse gas inventory, what facilities and departments are or not included, right?

So everything under the auspices of county administration, this building, court tower, yes.

So the all the justice partners, the jail, sheriff's department, okay.

Yes.

All the county operations.

Yes.

Does that include Regional Office of Education, other sort of like pseudo county?

I don't think so.

No, so not forest preserve, not department of education.

No.

All the facilities under these four departments.

So everything under public works, um, everything under the health department, everything under DOT, uh, and everything under our other.

So are those departments?

Are you are the sort of fleet uh conversations happening with those departments as well?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Chair Hurd, did you have a question?

Okay.

Any other questions, comments?

The wonderful report, great update on the things that we're doing, and you know, really aligning with our strategic plan and all of you know our mission for the next five years.

So thank you guys so much.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Okay, we are going to move on to 9.7.

Facilities and construction services energy program update.

All right.

Uh Carl Fuchs, Energy Program Manager.

Um, thank you guys uh for giving me the opportunity to talk today.

I'm really excited about this.

So I'll be uh presenting the findings of the 2025 uh energy report as well as some additional analysis of pathways for reaching late county's energy goals.

So why does this matter?

In September of 2020, the county board adopted a resolution committing county operations to net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Uh for today's discussion, the most relevant goals are by the year of 2030 reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% or more, and by the year of 2040, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% or more, as well as procuring 100% renewable energy.

Buildings and facilities uh account for approximately 65% of operational emissions, making them the county's single largest source of emissions.

Thus, understanding how facilities consume energy is essential for achieving the board's goals.

So, what this report does using electricity, natural gas, and facility information from 2023 through 2025, this reduce this report produces three primary outputs.

First, a countywide energy baseline, second, facility level benchmarking, and third, a composite priority score or CPS used to identify where future investments are likely to have the greatest impact.

Across the reporting period, county facilities used approximately 230,000 million BTU of energy annually.

Roughly 60% of this comes from electricity, and the remaining 40% comes from natural gas.

This is around the equivalent of about uh 30,000 homes.

Utility expenditures average approximately $5 million uh annually for electricity and just under 1 million annually for natural gas.

The cost difference here largely comes uh from electricity's higher cost per unit of energy.

So, where is our energy use?

Public works and FCS together account for nearly 85% of the county's total energy usage.

Looking by site type, approximately 92% of energy consumption occurs within buildings and wastewater treatment facilities.

This tells us that if we want to significantly reduce energy consumption, those are the areas where we are gonna need to focus our efforts.

Furthermore, energy use is also highly concentrated among a relatively small number of facilities.

The top 10 facilities account for uh 76% of the countywide energy usage.

The top five account for 61%, and the top three facilities alone account for nearly 50% of all energy consumed by county operations.

Those top three facilities are the Des Plains Water Reclamation Facility, Babcox Justice Center Work Release Tower, and the Admin and Court's buildings A, B, C, and D.

This concentration is very important because it means improvements at a small number of facilities can have a disproportionately large impact on our goals.

So next we're going to move to benchmarking.

So we need to evaluate facility performance, and to do that, we need to understand two different concepts.

The first is energy use intensity, or EUI, and the second is EUI score.

To understand this, let's think about vehicles.

So how do we measure a vehicle's energy efficiency?

We use miles per gallon.

EUI is essentially the building equivalent of miles per gallon.

It measures energy consumption relative to the size of a building.

However, we wouldn't directly compare the miles per gallon of a semi-truck and a small passenger vehicle because they serve different purposes.

We want to compare a semi-truck to other semi-trucks and a Prius to other Priuses.

Buildings are exactly the same concept.

There, we therefore compare a building's EUI against similar buildings nationwide to generate an EUI score on a scale of zero to 100, which 100 represents facilities that perform better.

And here are the results of that analysis.

This histogram shows the average EUI score across the reporting period received by each facility.

The countywide average was a 41.7.

And again, 100 is the best score that you can receive with zero being the worst.

While performance varies significantly across the portfolio, the overall results indicate that many facilities perform below national benchmarks.

This suggests substantial opportunities to improve energy performance and reduce operating costs.

So benchmarking tells us how our buildings perform.

However, performance alone doesn't tell us where to invest.

A small, inefficient building may present less opportunity than a large building with only moderate inefficiencies.

The composite priority score, or CPS, combines how inefficient a facility is with how much energy it consumes.

And this is done to answer a single question.

Where can we achieve the greatest energy savings?

So all of our buildings are then plotted onto this matrix on the right.

And here are all the facilities on that matrix.

Facilities in the upper right quadrant combine high energy usage with lower performance and therefore represent the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Facilities in the upper left corner are major energy users, but are already perform relatively well.

Facilities in the lower quadrants represent smaller portions of the portfolio and therefore offer less countywide impact.

Recall that CPS is not a grade.

Rather, it's a strategic tool to help identify where which facilities are the greatest opportunity to decrease the entire county's energy consumption.

So applying the CPS, we ranked all of our facilities across the portfolio.

These are the top five facilities where energy investments are likely to have the greatest impact.

These are the Des Plains Water Reclamation Facility, the Admin and Courts Building ABC and D, the Babcox Justice Center and Work Release Tower, Mill Creek Water Reclamation Facility, and the Central Permit Facility.

These facilities represent strong candidates for future energy audits, operational improvements, and capital investment.

So to review, the county now has a comprehensive 2023 to 2025 energy baseline covering electricity, natural gas, and onsite sold.

Energy use is highly concentrated with the top 10 facilities accounting for 76% of total energy consumption, within the top three representing nearly 50%.

Facility performance varies significantly, but overall our facilities underperform when compared nationally, indicating substantial opportunities for energy and cost savings.

The cost pro the composite priority score identifies the facilities where energy investments are likely to have the greatest impact.

All right.

So up until this point, we've been focusing on understanding performance and identifying our priorities.

Let's look beyond the information within the energy port for a moment.

The next question becomes what might it take to achieve the county's long-term energy commitments?

To explore that question, I developed three illustrative pathways to achieving the county's net zero energy goal by 2040.

The first pathway involves no investment and relies entirely on renewable energy certificates or recs.

The second pathway combines widespread solar development with limited uh energy efficiency improvements.

The third pathway combines widespread solar development with significant investment in energy conservation measures.

To compare these pathways, I also forecasted future utility expenditures under several scenarios, which is represented on the chart to the right.

For this analysis, I use the base case scenario, which is the blue line in the center.

So these pathways represent fundamentally different approaches to achieving the county's goals.

Pathway one requires little upfront investment but relies entirely on RECs and results in the highest long-term operating costs.

Pathway two reduces electricity costs through widespread solar development, but still requires some rec purchases.

Pathway three combines solar development with significant investment in energy efficiency measures, resulting in the lowest operating costs and eliminating the need for recs altogether.

Achieving the county's uh energy goals set in the 2020 resolution is feasible.

However, each pathway involves different trade-offs between capital investment, operating costs, and reliance on market mechanisms.

So our next steps are to review the highest priority facilities with department stakeholders, conduct targeted energy audits and identify specific energy conservation measures, and then develop a prioritized pipeline of capital projects, and then track results annually and update the energy report to measure our progress.

In closing, the energy report establishes where we are today, uh, identifies where we should focus first and provides a framework for evaluating pathways to achieve the county's long-term energy commitments.

While achieving the county's 2040 goals will require significant planning and investment, we now have the data foundation needed to move from analysis to implementation.

Thank you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Chair.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

Great work.

Thank you for that.

Of course.

Um, the scenarios and the numbers are interesting.

And I'm looking at you, administrator Sutton, because the first thought I had is the numbers work out to the point where the county could actually bond for the costs of the investment, and you're paying off the bonds with the savings generated over time.

So it essentially becomes budget neutral, but you're achieving the policy goals of the energy efficiency, and then longer term you've got those savings.

Just a thought I had uh, but uh great work, really really useful.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Member Kenijnik.

Yeah, can you just explain a little bit more about the RECs?

I'm like it's I'm I'm inferring that they're somehow not the ideal way to get to where we want to go, right?

I don't really understand enough about them to grasp that.

There are perfectly uh acceptable way to go if you want, but there has been previous um direction from board members uh to try and avoid those market mechanisms because instead of uh us going out and increasing the amounts of uh renewable energy production that is out there, we are simply purchasing some that has already been produced by someone else out there.

So it's um it's a perfectly fine uh way of going about it, but it's not necessarily um what we've been calling advised to do.

Um so there's just different ways of meeting these goals where you you don't necessarily need a lot of upfront investment in um recs, you just have to pay for them year over year, and they can get pretty expensive.

So before I join this committee, it sounds like this committee made and the full board made a decision to try to steer away from those to the greatest extent possible.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Um member Schleck, pilot by member Wasick.

Sure.

So I was trying to look at the pathway.

I was trying to wrap my head around the investment and this cost savings, and it was reading it right.

So base case annual costs in 2040.

If we did pass pathway three, which was 183 million, that was that was a total investment, would save about 10 million a year.

Was that about that's about correct, yes, because it would reduce uh the amounts that we would be spending on our uh utility bills just straight for paying for electricity and for the natural gas that we use, but then we would also be avoiding uh the recs that we would need to purchase to offset that um energy use.

So we'd be um because it also has the widespread solar, so our solar would uh produce all the energy that we need.

So we wouldn't need any more wrecks.

And that's also an extreme uh where it's like um every single possible thing that we could be implementing at every single facility that we have, and that might not necessarily be needed, and that's why we need those energy audits to really go into our buildings and understand what we need in each facility and find that that line where it makes sense to um the right amount of investment um that makes the most sense financially.

No, and I I'd love to see that, you know.

Obviously, we're talking kind of you know 10,000 square 10,000 feet here.

Love to see where that kind of made it worth a while to get there because on the surface those numbers look daunting.

Yes, but I'd be looking forward to future presentation to see if there is opportunities where something does make sense.

And like member Frank said, if you can get a revenue neutral, you know, where the money you're saving is paying the bond, well then you're foolish not to do it.

But as long as you know you don't you don't want to cost taxpayers extra money in the heart of trying to just do better.

So I'd be curious to see where it lands going forward, but great presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Member Wasick.

Thank you, Chair.

And this is really helpful, and you guys done a lot of work, and it's kind of illuminating some of the questions I think we need to have and are asking.

Uh so I was wondering if your modeling software can distinguish between different technologies.

Let's say that we can provide energy to some of our wastewater facilities uh through more solar, you know, a mixed portfolio, more heat pumps, uh, etc.

Does it distinguish between which technologies would give us the biggest bang for our buck per you know facility, or is it just kind of a general question?

It's more of a general question.

It wasn't looking at specific measures like that.

The only specific thing that was considered was uh solar development.

And I looked at um using the training facility and the Libertyville campus to uh install solar out there.

That's the most specific um models I did.

But for the energy conservation measures, those are more general based on how much uh you can kind of estimate how much energy savings that you can get through doing a certain number of uh energy conservation measures.

So uh that was not specifically modeled, whether it was heat pumps or do you want to do more insulation or do you want new windows?

That wasn't specific.

In order to do that, we would need those um detailed energy audits to really look at what are is driving energy consumption in our facilities.

So once you have the energy audits, you can say, okay, maybe for the central permit facility, we could do heat pumps, yes, and that will get us to where we want to go.

So that's like a next step in the process, then yes, exactly.

Okay, good.

That's that's good to know.

And I I think we're getting there.

It's just uh, and I'm not crazy about renewable energy credits either.

It's sort of like cheating because like buying somebody else's energy savings is like I don't want to do that.

But uh, you know, just if if we if we have an openness in the software that that lets us say, okay, well, what if we were to try you know all alternative energy scheme in this facility?

I know the the wastewater facilities use a lot of energy um more so than say the buildings here, but um you know, just sort of an all of the above approach, I think would be helpful.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, member campers.

Thank you, Chair.

Oh, this is less more of a less of a comment than more of a request.

Um there was a graph, there was a bar graph on there that detailed all of the or how many numbers um of the facilities and their EUI score, and then the very next one was a scatter graph.

Can we if I could just request a um a spreadsheet of all of its attributes in all in each one of those buildings because it'd be nice to know which one which six are zero to ten and then which four are 90 to 100.

Yeah, that's uh something uh I'd like to be able to provide in the future.

Uh at the moment, I'd like to first have the opportunity to go and meet with each of the department stakeholders and review uh the findings that we had, because you know, sometimes I don't want to um say that hey, your building didn't get a good score.

Well, let's have a conversation first and figure out what's going on there.

Uh I don't really want to uh provide those that information at the moment.

I just want to uh I more of a chance to get review with all the department stakeholders.

So you already have the score now, and you showed us the score.

Yes.

And now you want to round out the score first before you put that on a spreadsheet.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

But I would be willing to share that with you in the future.

You have a timeline and when you'd be able to, I I know you have to meet with all of them.

Well, I got a wedding coming up in two weeks.

I think um let's see here.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Um, so probably not two weeks.

Um, we'll have to see probably the next month, maybe two months.

I think I could probably do that just to give to the next committee.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what could be good.

Okay.

Thank you.

Member Fray.

Thanks, Chair.

What kind of um energy cost assumptions did you use in the model?

Yeah, sure.

Uh let me just double check.

Uh, for the utility expenditures for electricity, it was a three percent uh annual increase.

And the natural gas was one percent annual increase.

Is that what the historical increases have been?

Well, no.

Uh as I'm sure maybe you've heard the with data centers uh typically for the last 20 years or so, you know, due to uh, you know, electricity prices have been relatively stable, but it's looking like they will so that's the nature of my question.

It might be useful to have an alternate model where we see more than three.

I know that uh the the gas companies are submitting it for a rate increase right now as we speak.

So the the savings might be they they certainly could be.

Um some estimates are as high as uh over the next five years, you know, looking at a 10% increase around there.

So it can get quite high very quickly.

So um yeah, it's definitely something I've looked at, but just for this analysis using kind of like what would the base case be.

Okay, helpful to understand.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, member Wasik.

Yeah, and this this just occurred to me.

I mean technologies are changing, but a lot of them are are really dropping in price quite a bit.

So I was wondering if if your model gives you a little bit of flexibility saying, okay, well, maybe cogeneration would work, or maybe geothermal would work.

Does it give you that kind of flexibility?

Yes, the the models that we would be um looking at with the energy audits would have that um capability to uh uh you know look at all different types of energy generation solutions.

And it would be based on what trends or current prices or uh current prices of uh like electricity prices or natural gas prices or the price of the cost of the technology.

I would be on the current prices.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, great job.

Really interesting information.

And I like what Member Wasick talked about.

You know, there is gonna be a lot of updated new technology out there that's going to enable us to do to get to our goals quicker, I would imagine, you know, in the next decade.

I think there's going to be a lot of new developments with energy sources and um so we definitely need to keep our eye on those things.

And you know, we like to be on the precipice of, you know, trying to be a leader in in these areas and really kind of be a role model for all of our towns in the county.

And I'm sure we'll be sharing some of this information with them.

And we'd love to see them also, you know, follow suit and try to save money and energy and uh you know, curb their emissions.

And um, you know, this is something we should, you know, as we do more research, we should bring these these ideas to the League of Municipalities and other groups that um, you know, that's what where the leaders are looking to get their information and see what's going on.

And um I love putting things out there so they don't have to do everything on their own and duplicate what somebody else is already doing.

So all right, thank you.

Thank you.

And congratulations.

Oh, thanks.

Yeah.

Very exciting.

Um is there a county administrators report?

No county administrators report.

Any executive session?

No need for executive session.

Okay.

Any members' remarks?

No members' remarks.

Okay.

Um we will adjourn until July 29th, 2026.

Have a great day.

And I hope we see some of you at our 250 celebration at noon.