On June 24, Nexamp, the nation’s largest community solar developer (a consumer-forward IPP, as CEO Zaid Ashai recently calls them), opened its Chicago office, the company’s second headquarters, for an evening co-hosted with the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI). Policymakers, regulators, and advocates filled the room alongside CELI fellows and students from the Nexamp and City Colleges of Chicago renewable energy fellowship. The stated theme was community investment and workforce development. The deeper story is the one worth making the case for: no state is doing more to prove you can build solar, wind, and batteries fast and do it equitably than Illinois.
Plenty of states can deploy renewables. Illinois is deploying them while writing equity, labor standards, and consumer protection into the core of the program, and the results now show up in both megawatts and people.
Nexamp CEO Zaid Ashai set the tone, framing the transition as a choice. Disruption on this scale can build a more decentralized, equitable economy or produce a K-shaped outcome where the value accrues to the few who hold capital. Done right, he argued, clean energy and affordability are not at odds. Distributed solar and storage are the path to price stability for ordinary ratepayers, not a tax on them.
The political backing was in the room. State Representative Marcus C. Evans Jr., Assistant Majority Leader and current president of the National Conference of State Legislatures, put it plainly: infrastructure gets built when government makes a clear decision and stops waffling, and Illinois has made its. Springfield, he said, is lockstep on building a clean energy economy.
Brian Granahan, director of the Illinois Power Agency (IPA), brought the receipts. Illinois has more than 6,000 MW of solar energized, making it the Midwest leader, up from roughly 80 MW a decade ago. More than 13 GW of wind and solar have been developed under the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, and with the Illinois Commerce Commission approving a fresh round of roughly 800 MW of wind and 740 MW of solar, the pipeline pushes toward 14.5 GW.
The qualitative point matters more. On the Institute for Local Self-Reliance Community Power Scorecard, Illinois is the only state to earn a B, ahead of New York, Massachusetts, and California. Other states now call Illinois for guidance on equity and consumer protection.
The panel, moderated by Jess Collingsworth, Nexamp’s central policy director, dug into the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act (CRGA, SB 25), signed by Governor Pritzker in January and effective June 1. The people implementing it were on stage.
Audrey Steinbach, the IPA’s energy storage director, walked through utility-scale storage. Illinois is targeting 3,000 MW of cumulative storage by the end of 2030, beginning with an initial procurement this August and rounds in 2027 and 2028. The first uses an Indexed Storage Credit contract, conceptually similar to New York’s. Policy certainty, she stressed, is not nice to have, it is the legislative mandate that lets the IPA work at all.
Two more CRGA threads to watch. The residential virtual power plant opens enrollment for ComEd and Ameren customers around mid-July, paying homeowners with batteries for grid services. And the new statewide Integrated Resource Plan, Illinois’ first real resource plan, has a draft due in November. JC Kibbey, climate advisor for the State of Illinois, called VPPs the fastest, cheapest way to bring supply online, and noted that 71 percent of Illinoisans want 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
Kavi Chintam, Vote Solar’s Illinois campaign manager, gave the honest federal counterpoint: with the investment tax credit phasing out, some Illinois Solar for All projects no longer pencil, though raised REC prices have kept Illinois more insulated than most. The picture would still be better with a federal partner than with tariffs and clawbacks.
Illinois’ minimum equity standard requires that 14 percent of a participating project’s workforce be equity-eligible, a category that includes graduates of job training programs, formerly incarcerated individuals, foster care alumni, and residents of equity investment eligible communities. Kibbey was candid about the gap that remains: the industry cannot find enough workers while training programs can place only a fraction of their graduates. Closing that gap is what success looks like.
Chintam made it concrete. A church in an environmental justice community near Carbondale went solar through Illinois Solar for All, and the savings let it keep a free Sunday breakfast running. That is the kind of impact that never shows up in a spreadsheet.
The night closed on the most replicable idea of all. Marion Jones, vice president of community engagement & workforce development, introduced Chancellor Juan Salgado of City Colleges of Chicago. Together they described the STEM-based renewable energy fellowship the two launched in 2024 at Olive-Harvey College on the South Side, on track to reach 80 students by year end, up from about 20.
What makes it work, Jones explained, is that these are not unpaid interns but part-time paid employees doing real work across project management, grid integration, portfolio operations, policy, and procurement. Once their projects tied to business KPIs, Nexamp’s own units went from being asked to take a fellow to requesting two or three. Salgado, whose system serves 73,000 students, used his “Chicago Moonshot” to grow paid apprenticeships to 500 a year within five years as a challenge to other companies: follow the model.
Lots of places can put solar, wind, and batteries on the grid. Illinois is doing it while making sure the workforce, the savings, and the ownership reach the communities the old energy economy left behind, and it remains the fastest, cheapest path to a reliable grid. That is what an equitable transition looks like in practice: a procurement schedule, a workforce portal, and a paid fellowship on the South Side. Washington can make it harder. It cannot stop it.
Tim Montague is the President of Clean Power Consulting Group, host of the Clean Power Hour podcast, and author of Wired for the Sun: The Commercial Solar Playbook.
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