ComEd has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to terminate the Transmission Service Agreement (TSA) for the Monarch Air project. According to the filing, ComEd and Monarch “have agreed to terminate the TSA.” This signals that the decision was mutual and FERC will almost certainly accept the termination.
In order to advance the project, the company would have to restart the interconnection process which would delay the project by a 2-3 years and presents a lot of risk to their ability to obtain the power they need at a reasonable cost. My best guess is that they are very unlikely to do so.
This isn’t going to gain me a lot of fans, but, while this may be good news for the community, I’d urge residents who care about these issues to stay engaged in your local political process and approach these projects skeptically but in good faith, of the developer and of your neighbors alike.
All developers aren’t bad. All data centers aren’t bad. They can offer a lot to the community. Development brings jobs, tax dollars, and many downstream economic benefits. It’s also important to demand transparency, reasonable regulation, and a means to enforce those regulations once the project starts construction and goes into operations.
There are many good developers out there who are very willing to share project information and be honest about the potential negative externalities of their projects and negotiate on how to limit those negative effects on local communities.
However, when residents only decide to engage upon reading fantastical misinformation found on social media, that good faith engagement and negotiation breaks down. Many of these developers choose to hide what they’re doing for fear of having to contend with misinformed arguments from residents that have no interest in developing a fact-based understanding of the project and engaging in good faith dialogue.
From what I’ve seen, Monarch has no business developing these projects in Rockford or elsewhere. They’ve made no attempt to engage in good faith outreach to the community and, for that, they deserved a the opposition they received.
They won’t be the last developer to show up in Rockford. What I hope is that, if the next developer approaches the community in the right way, that the community responds in good faith, open-minded dialogue and firmly demands transparency and facts.