Updates

Lauren Robinson | Energy News Network Illinois’ Future Energy Jobs Act included funding to make solar training more accessible to lower-income residents. There was an energy about the 11 students gathered on a sunny December Saturday outside a South Side Chicago construction shop. Today, they’d put on their work gloves and protective glasses and put…

<b>Erin Hegarty | Chicago Tribune</b> Installation of more than 3,500 solar panels that could generate more than 1.6 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually is expected to begin this summer at Naperville’s Springbrook Water Reclamation Center. When completed, the six acres of high-efficiency solar panels will produce enough energy to power 145 homes a year,…

Ryan Denham | WGLT, NPR After the training, the 31-year-old received four jobs offers and moved to Colorado, where he installs solar panels on homes. “It was definitely a big move. But it did pan out well,” Laughlin said. Laughlin is one of thousands of workers who’ve benefited from a solar energy boom in the…

Samuel Garcia | NRDC Expert Blog The Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA) mandates that at least 25 percent of the Illinois Solar for All Program’s incentives be allocated to projects located within environmental justice communities. On January 17, Elevate Energy and the Illinois Power Agency (IPA) held a stakeholder engagement session to address how the program will…

Jim Meadows | Will Radio, Illinois Public Media At nearly 1200 acres and with a generating capacity of 150 megawatts, the solar farm would be the largest in the state, even bigger than a 99 megawatt project planned for Perry County in southern Illinois. Some county board members were doubtful about taking so much farmland…

Marie Wilson | Daily Herald Naperville has been chosen as one of four municipalities across the state to receive a solar-power project through a nonprofit energy organization that powers 32 Illinois communities. Construction is set to begin this summer on a 1-megawatt solar array of 3,500 panels on six acres at the city’s Springbrook Water…

Cassie Buchman | Lincoln Courier Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday signed an executive order for Illinois to join the U.S. Climate Alliance, meaning the state will agree to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement. The United States signed onto the Paris Agreement, a treaty that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in 2016. President…