On March 7, with the fanfare of an election campaign event, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and environmental organizations hailed 91 communities in the Prairie State that now purchase 100 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources.



Quinn said. “This new study confirms that people around the world can look to Illinois as an example of what can be done with renewable energy.” “Renewable energy benefits everyone, from energy customers to Illinois farmers to anyone who breathes our air,”

This sounds great — and it certainly recognizes grassroots efforts by local communities.

Unfortunately, it’s only half true.

As part of a long-denounced Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde energy policy, the state of Illinois under Quinn — a Democrat who once led anti-strip-mining campaigns and swept into office on promises of regulatory reform — carried out a series of mind-boggling machinations this month in favor of coal mining and hydraulic fracking.

What’s the matter with Illinois? Why is the state pursuing an incoherent, all-of-the-above energy policy with erratic thrusts reminiscent of recent extreme climate disturbances?

Last spring, in fact, Quinn announced his state’s record fivefold increase in coal exports, en route to CO2-spewing coal-fired plants abroad, just as climate scientists were noting that our planet had reached the alarming 400 parts-per-million milestone of CO2 emissions for the first time in millions of years. A subsequent study found that the state of Illinois loses nearly $20 million annually (PDF) to maintain the coal industry.

In that same climate-tone-deaf mode, this month’s clean energy proclamation came as a Chicago Tribune headline noted how hundreds of communities across the heartland are outraged at being locked into a nearly three-decade commitment to Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal company, which built and, in 2012, began operating its Prairie State coal-fired plant in southern Illinois. With massive cost overruns that have saddled 217 municipalities and 17 electric membership cooperatives across the Midwest with spiking electricity rates, the plant has since been embroiled in federal investigations over fraud.

The Peabody Energy debacle even extended into the Illinois coalfields earlier this March. To the fury of local farmers and residents battling to save the historic community of Rocky Branch in southern Illinois — not far from where the Peabody Coal Co. sank its first coal mine in 1895 — out-of-state loggers hired by Peabody moved their clear-cutting equipment onto the most controversial strip-mine site in the state in the dead of night, despite earlier violations for logging operations without any state permits.



With required state environmental permits still in the public comment period (PDF), the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR) on March 12 hastily issued the mining permit, as pre-mining logging tore into the forested Shawnee hill habitats that include endangered Indiana bats, according to local residents and naturalists.