ComEd Renewable Energy Investments Help Expand Customer Access to Clean Energy and Lower Costs

$10 billion in renewable energy credits expands access to wind and solar, supports customer savings and reduces emissions across Illinois

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ComEd today announced it exceeded $10 billion in Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) under contract at the end of 2025 – an investment that is helping expand access to clean energy, support lower energy costs over time, and deliver environmental benefits for customers across Illinois. The milestone is equivalent to 383 million megawatt-hours of new renewable energy produced in Illinois. Distributed energy resources (DER) like rooftop solar have reached 1.7 gigawatts (GW) on ComEd’s grid, which is enough to power 306,000 homes for a year.

Growth accelerated in 2025 with approximately 105 million additional RECs added under contract last year, making it one of the most significant single-year expansions of renewable energy support in Illinois history. RECs represent the environmental attributes of electricity generated from renewable energy. The $10 billion milestone reflects the cumulative value of ComEd’s active REC contracts, which it pays out to renewable energy developers over terms of up to 20 years. These long-term commitments provide financial certainty for developers while helping bring more affordable renewable energy options to customers across Illinois.

“The $10 billion REC contract milestone reflects the scale and durability of Illinois’ clean energy policies and the important role RECs play in bringing new renewable generation online,” said Andrew Plenge, vice president of Strategy & Energy Policy at ComEd. “Administering these long-term contracts helps ensure that renewable projects can be financed and built, expanding access to renewable energy and its benefits for the communities we serve.”

ComEd’s 1.7 GWs of DER is up from 1 GW in 2024, across more than 2,000 commercial and nearly 80,000 residential rooftop solar systems. Additionally, more than 270 community solar projects are interconnected to ComEd’s grid with more than 480 under construction. Community solar offers all ComEd customers access to clean and renewable solar energy and opportunities to reduce their monthly electricity bills without installing solar panels of their own.

Clean energy generation helps reduce emissions, support economic development, and expand access to renewable energy benefits across the state. In Illinois, electric utilities purchase and retire RECs to comply with the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, which sets goals for utilities to obtain a percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources. The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), passed in 2021, sets Illinois on a path to 100% clean energy by 2050 with 40% of energy coming from renewables by 2030 and 50% by 2040.

RECS are awarded through processes conducted by the Illinois Power Agency (IPA) and approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC). ComEd administers the REC contracts, including managing payments to approved vendors on behalf of customers.

ComEd’s multi-year Grid Plan, submitted to the ICC in January, supports the clean energy transition by aligning investments to enable additional residential and commercial solar projects, battery storage, high-efficiency heat pumps and other emerging technologies. These investments will support a modern, multi-directional grid capable of managing the increasing flow of power to and from a growing number of distributed energy resources.

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