The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and a national nonprofit met Tuesday with the Peoria community to discuss a multiyear planning process to make Illinois waterways and ports more environmentally friendly.
The Illinois EPA joined with Calstart Tuesday evening at 201 S.W. Adams St. in Downtown Peoria to discuss with the public a longterm planning project to decarbonize Illinois waters. Calstart is a California-based nonprofit centered on creating high tech, clean transportation industries across the country.
“This is really an opportunity to explore different strategies to understand what operations are happening here [and] what paths forward may be taken, but this is only a planning project,” Lily Paul, Calstart project lead and deputy director of the Midwest regional office, said at the meeting.
“There are not funds under this current opportunity to actually deploy any of the vehicles, equipment, vessels, anything that is being discussed here,” she said. “It is strictly planning.”
In 2024, the EPA Clean Ports Program, formed under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, supplied $3 billion across 26 U.S. states and territories, of which Illinois was the main recipient. Illinois received two planning and deployment grants of more than $95 million.
The funds are to help the Illinois EPA plan for decarbonizing state ports and purchasing zero-emission port equipment.
The Illinois project plan is scheduled to run from September 2025 to December 2027. A key focus is helping terminal operators and businesses operating within the port districts go after funding that will assist those entities in getting cleaner vehicles and equipment.
Paul said the project was not exclusively battery electric, hydrogen or any other alternative fuel. They can discuss or prioritize any fuel type to reduce carbon emissions.
“The goal is really to do what works well for these port districts, for these communities,” Paul said.
The Illinois Clean Ports Program will utilize the planning funds for seven port districts. This includes three rural locations: Illinois Waterway Ports Commission, the Mid-America Intermodal Authority Port District and the Upper Mississippi River International Port District. The three locations make up 23 counties and 470 river miles along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers.
Chris Smith, Corn Belt Ports operations director, attended the Tuesday meeting. He said afterward that he saw the plan as an opportunity. During the meeting, he said he appreciated Calstart highlighting Illinois’ unique rural ports.
“The terminals are privately owned,” Smith said. “The port districts do not own land now currently. So, there is a partnership between the public and private side and all the regional stakeholders. So, it’s unique, and there’s a lot of feeders into the terminals, which just aren’t captured elsewhere.”
Assessing the need — and the cost
Leah Thill, director of Calstart's Midwest regional office, said moving goods by the water helps secure energy security and reduces reliance on fossil fuels and fuel price volatility. That makes decarbonization an energy security and domestic energy issue.
Funding can go quickly. In one case, infrastructure funding meant to last three years lasted only a couple months.
While the EPA and Calstart are looking at all alternative fuel options, electrification has the most funding and has the greatest potential to reduce emissions. But funding is available through various means for different fuel types.
“There is funding currently, and there will be,” said Dennis Esquivel, Illinois EPA’s clean energy grant manager. “That’s why Calstart now is really making the impact on this analysis for the water ports to really understand not only demand but what the ports actually want and/or need so that we can then adjust what is out there as far as funding for that specific port.”
Paul said they were not pushing anything on anyone.
“We’re here to help everyone get where they need to be,” Paul said, “and again, talking about how different these port districts are from a lot of the others that you hear about, this is an opportunity to invest in these areas to really bring resources to them — especially as they have slightly different needs, different set-ups than other port districts and resources that are out there.
“So, it’s a great opportunity that I hope everybody is interested in, and I hope our terminal operators are interested in participating.”
Illinois EPA and Calstart to host roughly five community meetings, but that number could change.
The next meeting will focus on the Mid-America Intermodal Authority Port District. It will be held at 7 p.m. on June 30 in Quincy. The Upper Mississippi River International Port District meeting will be at 7 p.m., July 29, in Savanna, Ill.
There are also plans for July virtual meetings.
More information about the Illinois Clean Ports Program can be found at its website illinoiscleanports.org. Suggestions, comments and feedback can be submitted at meetings or to EPA.cleanports@illinois.gov. In the future, there will be opportunities for feedback on the website, and there may be surveys, as well.
Calstart is also receiving feedback during quarterly meetings with a steering committee made up of stakeholders selected by the Illinois Port Authority, which identified the stakeholders as being fundamental to the project.
The committee is informing the process, not making decisions, which are made by the port district and Illinois EPA.
“They’re just here to help make sure that nothing’s overlooked, that no one’s steamrolling through here,” Paul said. “It’s really just to make sure that, again, this is a process that is successful, because if we don’t take into consideration the companies, the community, any of that, no of this is any good. It has to be something people are behind if they choose to move forward with it.”
