Green energy conversations: Leaders pioneering Chicagoland sustainability efforts share their vision with Energy Department under secretary

The evolving energy landscape on the South Side of Chicago provided the backdrop for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Under Secretary for Science and Innovation Geri Richmond to learn about the strides made and the challenges faced by leaders — most of them women — who are helping guide clean energy and novel sustainability efforts in their communities.

DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and its Office of Community Engagement (OCE) facilitated conversations in July between Richmond and leaders involved in the work of transitioning to green energy on the South Side.

“It is exciting to be a part of this work, in this space, in this moment.” — Lindy Wordlaw, Chicago Recovery Plan director, City of Chicago 

Stop 1: Kicking off the day with powerhouse voices at the Green Living Room in Woodlawn

Richmond’s first stop was at Blacks in Green’s (BIG) Green Living Room where she conversed with a gathering of leading women in energy (see participants’ names and affiliations in the sidebar).

The Green Living Room, an event and community gathering place in the Woodlawn neighborhood, is part of the vision of meeting participant Naomi Davis, founder and CEO of BIG. BIG works to tackle the negative impacts of climate change and environmental injustice and is pioneering environmental economic development via the new green economy. Her vision is to transform Black communities into oases of decarbonization and resilience against the climate crisis, creating communities that are self-sustaining. BIG is an Argonne community partner.

Argonne OCE Director Robyn Wheeler Grange, in welcoming everyone to the discussion, invited the women to share their roles and histories in the green energy space and the barriers they face that will hinder further progress in their communities. Each was also invited to make an ​“ask” of Richmond to take back with her to Washington.

Barriers identified by the participants included:  

• Navigating government processes, which can be a major challenge when pursuing funding and adopting green technologies. 
• Identifying scientists to be community partners, acting as scientific ambassadors that present STEM careers to students in underrepresented groups.  
• Addressing capacity issues for the community-based organizations because often, staff are small and wear many hats. 

The participants’ ​“asks” included:  

• Fundamental problems need to be addressed in tandem with exploration of clean energy initiatives. For example, if a community regularly experiences flooding, clean energy will not be a community focus. 
• There is a need to establish clean energy projects that are sustainable beyond election cycles. 
• Not-for-profits and small businesses need simpler processes put in place to access federal funding for clean energy initiatives. 

Richmond acknowledged the resource and capacity challenges. ​“Who has time to put together a 50-page proposal if you barely have access to a computer?” she remarked at one point.

Added Argonne Laboratory Director Paul Kearns, who joined Richmond on her tours: ​“We are challenging ourselves to become more relevant and have more impact in the City of Chicago.”

Megan Clifford, Argonne associate laboratory director for science and technology partnerships, also engaged in the day’s events. She emphasized that her team, which includes the OCE, is about ​“fostering partnerships to increase Argonne’s impact. People and relationships drive innovation. The more that we can connect into your networks and communities, the more we can make a difference.”

Stop 2: CROCUS sensors in Chicago State University’s prairie-scape

Next, the group visited Chicago State University (CSU) in the Roseland neighborhood. The group was hosted by CSU President Zaldwaynaka Scott, a leader in addressing Black student access and success in higher education.

The purpose of the stop was to understand the setting and data being collected by several CROCUS (Community Research on Climate and Urban Science) sensors on the CSU campus.

CROCUS is an Argonne-led, DOE-funded research project launched in 2022 and established as an urban integrated field laboratory. It is advancing understanding of how urban areas impact the regional climate and how climate impacts cities, with a focus on energy and environmental justice communities. CSU is one of 17 partners contributing to the research and workforce development aspects of the project.

At CSU, instrumentation has been placed on a rooftop and on two 10-meter towers that stand adjacent to a prairie-scape on campus. CSU students and professors explained their roles on the CROCUS project and how the equipment measures air quality, weather conditions, rain and soil conditions.

Of particular interest, given the morning’s discussion on extreme flooding in nearby Chatham, was a sensor on a tree near the towers, where three probes measure the upstream and downstream movement of water in the tree trunk every 20 minutes. The idea is to discover which trees are ​“best” for different neighborhoods and parks based on how much water a given tree species may uptake per year and thus how many trees are needed to mitigate flooding.

Stop 3: Green Era Campus: A template for green energy implementation

The group’s third and final stop was at the Green Era Campus in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. Richmond met with Green Era’s co-founders, Erika Allen and Jason Feldman. Argonne and Green Era Campus recently signed a memorandum of understanding to enable joint pursuit of collaborative research projects that will address climate change at the nexus of water, energy and food.

The Green Era Campus is a partnership of Green Era Sustainability, Urban Growers Collective and Green Era Educational NFP. In 2014, Allen and Feldman acquired and began transforming a vacant, 9-acre brownfield site — designated as such due to being polluted and abandoned during a previous industrial application — into a renewable energy facility and green oasis for clean energy, economic empowerment and urban agriculture.

The Green Era Campus is home to an urban farm and a 35,000-square-foot anaerobic digester, which was completed in 2022. The digester system converts food waste into renewable energy in two forms: as natural gas that feeds directly into the distribution grid and as compost for Green Era’s urban food-growing operations.

During the visit, Allen and Feldman outlined the ​“hidden” waste stream of expired or mislabeled foods. Another source is food banks, which end up having to throw away 30-40% of food donations because they receive spoiled product. Larger trucks from major food retailers might bring 20 to 40 tons of this kind of material per load, and the facility can receive up to six loads per day.

After ​“depackaging” the nutrient-rich food waste from its containers, this material is put through the digester system, which generates between 40 and 80 yards of fertilizer per day. Discarded packaging is sent for recycling to a materials research facility such as the one at Argonne.

Allen and Feldman pointed out that, in their quest over the years to create fertility for their urban gardens, the ​“missing piece” was the digester. It has enabled them to scale up their operations to the point of putting natural gas back into the power distribution system and creating the digestate so desperately needed for the compost on their urban farms.

Throughout this process, as Feldman noted, the Green Era team ​“did lots of bootstrapping” and wrangled all of the problem solving. The result? Their digester facility is ​“the first of its kind.” Which also means it can be replicated, and the Green Era Campus can serve as a model for communities all over the world to follow. Beyond that, Allen added, ​“We have school kids touring the campus every day. Young people can see their on-ramp into the new green economy.”

Each stop on the tour was selected to broaden Richmond’s understanding of the implications for and impact of DOE funding in these communities.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

Perspectives from each of the women in clean energy who met with Richmond at the Green Living Room:

From the City of Chicago

• Angela Tovar, chief sustainability officer and commissioner, City of Chicago
  “Every action in our 2022 Climate Action Plan is tied to a community benefit.”
• Samantha Bingham, clean transportation program director, Chicago Department of Transportation
  “We seek to reduce emissions from the transportation sector and make electric beautiful and more accessible to Chicagoans.”
• Lindy Wordlaw, Chicago Recovery Plan director, City of Chicago
  “It is exciting to be a part of this work, in this space, in this moment.”

From community-focused organizations

• Naomi Davis, founder and CEO, Blacks in Green
  “How do we use the new green economy to close the wealth gap? We are creating economies of energy in housing, tourism and waste … But if you can’t afford it, what’s the point?”
• Nedra Sims Fears, executive director, Greater Chatham Initiative
  “Chatham is the number one flooding space in Chicagoland. As the saying goes, ‘It rains all over Chicago, but it floods in Chatham.’ We get what climate resilience is.”
• Sherelle Withers, executive director, Innovation Metropolis-Smart Tech District
  "As urban planners, we have to understand the environment and improve it with the people around it. Given all of these organizations in this continual race, we’re here because we need to be here, our community demands it.”
• Karen Youngblood, renewable energy consultant, Chicago Urban League
  “There’s a great need to translate RFPs [requests for proposals] to build projects. Workers can’t translate the knowledge. We’re boots on the ground.”
• Nina Idemudia, CEO, Center for Neighborhood Technology
  “We take on the initiative of getting grants. I ‘triple-know’ where there are inefficiencies.”
• Rev. Veronica Johnson, outreach director, Faith in Place
  “Whether through nature or garden walks or green teams, I will draw from these for advocacy in Springfield.”
• Anne Evens, CEO, Elevate
  “At Elevate, we implement clean water upgrades. We also recruit many women-owned businesses to upgrade to solar panels.”