Green Bay’s Goal
100% Clean Energy by 2050
In 2021, Green Bay’s City Council passed a resolution that created the goal of using 100% clean energy and achieving carbon neutrality throughout our community by the year 2050. Click here to read Green Bay’s Clean Energy Plan. (If you’re interested in Green Bay’s sustainability and resilience initiatives more broadly, check out our Resilience and Sustainability Hub!)
That may sound ambitious, but we’re not doing it alone. There is broad agreement that there are many reasons to phase in clean sources of energy and move on from the dirty old fuels. We have many partners: the State of Wisconsin (read the state roadmap here), the Oneida Nation, WPS, private companies, nonprofit organizations, and many engaged citizens.
The energy we use is in transition & always will be
Since our founding, the United States has undergone multiple energy transitions. At one time, wood was our chief source of energy. In our earliest days in the U.S., what wood we didn’t use to build, we burned for energy. We heated our homes, ran our forges, and built our cities. Then, in the 19th century, we discovered the combination of coal and steam engines, something that transformed our world. We spread out across the continent using steam locomotives. Oil overtook coal in the 1950s, and natural gas will soon overtake oil. Over the next several decades, clean sources of energy will come to predominate.
Each of these fuels have advantages and disadvantages. Take coal, it’s cheap and powerful. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the dirtiest forms of energy. It emits carbon that heats the atmosphere and pollutants that impact our health. We’ll be dealing with the consequences of coal for a long time. Fortunately, we don’t need to rely on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas because we’ve developed the technologies we need for a clean energy economy.
Clean energy?
In the State of Wisconsin, 100% clean energy is defined as wind, solar, hydropower, clean gas from waste gases or green hydrogen, and nuclear. Not all of these are renewable, but none of them emit carbon or pollutants.
In 2024, clean energy accounted for 40% of the national total. Locally, it’s 16.6%.
(National information (US EIA), Local information (WPS)
Top 5 Benefits of Clean Energy
BENEFIT NUMBER 1
Clean energy is safer for you and your family
The health of our family, our friends, our neighbors, and our community is important. We are only beginning to fully understand how we’ve been impacted by fossil fuels.
- A study published in 2023 found that 13% of childhood asthma cases are attributable to the use of gas stoves (link, link).
- Globally, pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths (link).
- The negative health impacts of fossil fuel pollution aren’t distributed evenly. They harm the most vulnerable people in our society the most, including the young, the elderly, and lower-income families.
- Several scientists at UW-Madison published a report called “Medical Alert! Climate change is harming our health in Wisconsin.” It covers many of the health impacts that doctors and nurses are currently dealing with in our state.
- IMF: The ‘True Cost’ of fossil fuels is $5.3 trillion a year. (The World)
- Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? (Oxford Univ.)
BENEFIT NUMBER 2
Running things on clean energy is cheaper
The cost of renewable energy—as a whole—is less than fossil fuels. The following graph shows some of the dynamic between the two. As technologies improve, clean energy becomes more affordable and efficient every year. On the other hand, fossil fuels are growing more expensive.
BENEFIT NUMBER 3
Clean energy is, well, cleaner
Green Bay is a place where we are deeply tied to our natural environment. The use of fossil fuels pollutes our waterways, the air that people, plants, and animals depend on, and even the soil. Burning fossil fuels emits greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere (link). It’s a relationship that’s been well understood for over a century.
Now that we have the technology to keep fossil fuels in the ground, we can finally retire them. No source of energy is without some environmental impacts, but we can choose the ones that have the least impact on the environment.
BENEFIT NUMBER 4
Clean energy is more efficient
Clean energy means me we can do more with less.
It’s more efficient to collect energy directly from renewable sources like the sun, the wind, and river current, then it is to transport coal or natural gas to a power plant, burn it, transfer the heat energy to mechanical turbines, and then create electricity from kinetic energy.
You lose a lot of heat energy in the process. Even after decades of development, the best natural gas plants top out at 45% efficient (link). The hot gases you see rising from the top of the stack? Among other things, you’re seeing wasted energy.
Roughly 2/3rds of the electricity that’s generated is wasted before it reaches a single customer. (link)
The Wall Street Journal found that wind power is 1,164% efficient, geothermal 514%, and solar 207%. Fossil fuels, combined, were 40% (link). That means that for every kW you put into wind, you get back more than 11. With the fuels of the past, you lose more than half!
BENEFIT NUMBER 5
Clean energy is local
Since 2020, electricity prices have risen more steeply in Wisconsin than in South Dakota. In South Dakota, the average cost has gone from 11¢ per kWh to 12¢ while Wisconsin has gone from 13¢ to 17¢. The chief reason for the difference is South Dakota produces a much larger proportion of its energy with wind turbines, nearly 60%! (link)
Wisconsin imports most of its energy from other states or countries. As commodities, coal and oil prices are determined internationally. This connects us to global energy markets that are beyond our control. Clean energy, on the other hand, is generated right here from sources that cost nothing. The wind and sun can’t be traded on international commodity exchanges. Whereas in recent years we have seen our energy prices go up because of oil refineries being damaged by hurricanes, wars like the one in the Ukraine, and the aftermath of a global pandemic, the sun and wind are stable.
Updated: 2/27/2026