State Director, Illinois PIRG; Energy and Utilities Program Director, PIRG
Started on staff: 2002
B.A., Haverford College
Abe Scarr is the director of Illinois PIRG and is the PIRG Energy and Utilities Program Director. He is a lead advocate in the Illinois Capitol and in the media for stronger consumer protections, utility accountability, and good government. In 2017, Abe led a coalition to pass legislation to implement automatic voter registration in Illinois, winning unanimous support in the Illinois General Assembly for the bill. He has co-authored multiple in-depth reports on Illinois utility policy and leads coalition campaigns to reform the Peoples Gas pipe replacement program. As PIRG’s Energy and Utilities Program Director, Abe supports PIRG energy and utility campaigns across the country and leads the national Gas Stoves coalition. He also serves as a board member for the Consumer Federation of America. Abe lives in Chicago, where he enjoys biking, cooking and tending his garden.
In a legal brief filed Wednesday, the consumer group argues that Peoples Gas should continue to address bonafide emergencies and finish in-progress projects in its paused pipe replacement program, but that the commission should not authorize related increases to customer bills until the Chicago gas utility does more to justify this work in its next rate hike request.
If the bill becomes law, fluorescent lighting would be replaced over time with highly efficient LED bulbs, saving Illinois consumers more than $1.5 billion on utility bills, avoiding 2.2M metric tons of C02 emissions by cutting energy waste, and avoiding 419 lbs of mercury pollution by 2050.
Illinois PIRG works to create a healthier, safer, more secure future for all Illinoisians. Here are the problems we are working to solve in 2023.
We support House Bill 4767, to protect consumers from excessive and unfair car insurance rate hikes
In response to Gov. Pritzker’s prioritization of consumer protection in the health insurance marketplace, state Rep. Will Guzzardi and state Sen. Javier Cervantes made the following statements:
