(20 ILCS 3855/1-5)
    Sec. 1-5. Legislative declarations and findings. The General Assembly finds and declares:
        (1) The health, welfare, and prosperity of all
    
Illinois citizens require the provision of adequate, reliable, affordable, efficient, and environmentally sustainable electric service at the lowest total cost over time, taking into account any benefits of price stability.
        (2) The transition to retail competition is not
    
complete. Some customers, especially residential and small commercial customers, have failed to benefit from lower electricity costs from retail and wholesale competition.
        (3) Escalating prices for electricity in Illinois
    
pose a serious threat to the economic well-being, health, and safety of the residents of and the commerce and industry of the State.
        (4) To protect against this threat to economic
    
well-being, health, and safety it is necessary to improve the process of procuring electricity to serve Illinois residents, to promote investment in energy efficiency and demand-response measures, and to support development of clean coal technologies and renewable resources.
        (5) Procuring a diverse electricity supply portfolio
    
will ensure the lowest total cost over time for adequate, reliable, efficient, and environmentally sustainable electric service.
        (6) Including cost-effective renewable resources in
    
that portfolio will reduce long-term direct and indirect costs to consumers by decreasing environmental impacts and by avoiding or delaying the need for new generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure.
        (7) Energy efficiency, demand-response measures, and
    
renewable energy are resources currently underused in Illinois.
        (8) The State should encourage the use of advanced
    
clean coal technologies that capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions to advance environmental protection goals and to demonstrate the viability of coal and coal-derived fuels in a carbon-constrained economy.
        (9) The General Assembly enacted Public Act 96-0795
    
to reform the State's purchasing processes, recognizing that government procurement is susceptible to abuse if structural and procedural safeguards are not in place to ensure independence, insulation, oversight, and transparency.
        (10) The principles that underlie the procurement
    
reform legislation apply also in the context of power purchasing.
    The General Assembly therefore finds that it is necessary to create the Illinois Power Agency and that the goals and objectives of that Agency are to accomplish each of the following:
        (A) Develop electricity procurement plans to ensure
    
adequate, reliable, affordable, efficient, and environmentally sustainable electric service at the lowest total cost over time, taking into account any benefits of price stability, for electric utilities that on December 31, 2005 provided electric service to at least 100,000 customers in Illinois and for small multi-jurisdictional electric utilities that (i) on December 31, 2005 served less than 100,000 customers in Illinois and (ii) request a procurement plan for their Illinois jurisdictional load. The procurement plan shall be updated on an annual basis and shall include renewable energy resources sufficient to achieve the standards specified in this Act.
        (B) Conduct competitive procurement processes to
    
procure the supply resources identified in the procurement plan.
        (C) Develop electric generation and co-generation
    
facilities that use indigenous coal or renewable resources, or both, financed with bonds issued by the Illinois Finance Authority.
        (D) Supply electricity from the Agency's facilities
    
at cost to one or more of the following: municipal electric systems, governmental aggregators, or rural electric cooperatives in Illinois.
        (E) Ensure that the process of power procurement is
    
conducted in an ethical and transparent fashion, immune from improper influence.
        (F) Continue to review its policies and practices to
    
determine how best to meet its mission of providing the lowest cost power to the greatest number of people, at any given point in time, in accordance with applicable law.
        (G) Operate in a structurally insulated, independent,
    
and transparent fashion so that nothing impedes the Agency's mission to secure power at the best prices the market will bear, provided that the Agency meets all applicable legal requirements.
(Source: P.A. 97-325, eff. 8-12-11; 97-618, eff. 10-26-11; 97-813, eff. 7-13-12.)