Illinois Solar for All is, at last, taking off

Any time, day or night, parents experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, or other emergencies can drop their young kids off at the Crisis Nursery in Urbana, Illinois, and know they’ll be safe and cared for.

Funding is a constant challenge for the 45-year-old nonprofit organization. But it was able to create a bit of financial breathing room by putting solar panels on its roof back in 2020, leading to significant savings on its energy bills.

Crisis Nursery was one of the first beneficiaries of Illinois Solar for All, a state program to make the clean energy source accessible to households, nonprofits, and public facilities in lower-income communities and areas facing environmental injustice. Participants receive at least half the value of the energy generated by their solar array, with no up-front costs for buildings with four or fewer units, as well as no or low up-front costs for larger projects.

The program, created by a state law that took effect in 2017, was slow to get off the ground. The available funds went largely unspent for years, despite the savings on offer.

But in recent years, the program has become a success — and a lesson in the importance of long-term commitment and extensive grassroots engagement, as administrators and advocates see it.

During the initiative’s last cycle, from June 2024 to May 2025, more projects were approved than in its first five years combined, according to the Illinois Power Agency, the state entity that oversees the program. Last year, the Illinois Commerce Commission ordered a funding boost of $20 million, and every last dollar went out the door ​“almost immediately,” the Illinois Power Agency said in its latest annual report.

New application windows for Illinois Solar for All are open through September, for different types of projects, and program administrators expect heavy interest, including from those wait-listed in the last round.

State-level solar programs with an equity focus are especially important now, advocates say, given the Trump administration’s cancellation of the federal Solar for All initiative created by the Inflation Reduction Act. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans also slashed tax credits for residential and large-scale solar projects with last year’s megabill.

Just as Illinois Solar for All is coming into its own, the loss of federal incentives raises new challenges. Without those dollars, the state funding simply won’t go as far as it once did.

“It’s a big swing,” said Wade Halva, who has long advocated for clean energy in southern Illinois, as a pastor and associate director of programs for Faith in Place, an environmental justice organization. ​“Does it mean the state program has to change? Can we even do residential at a guaranteed savings rate without federal incentives?”

But Jennifer Schmidt, Illinois Solar for All senior program manager for the Illinois Power Agency, sees a silver lining. ​“A sense of urgency driven by the sunsetting of federal tax credits,” she said, has helped fuel the recent success of Illinois Solar for All — and she expects the momentum to continue.

A solar program’s growing pains

At the beginning, Illinois Solar for All had an awareness problem.

Many Illinois residents — particularly those in rural areas where solar adoption was low — had never considered putting panels on their roofs. Others may have liked the idea but felt they didn’t have the bandwidth to manage a complex home upgrade like solar, even if it was low- or no-cost.

And plenty of residents were just plain skeptical of a government program that sounded too good to be true.

“The first hurdle was getting the idea that the program existed out there — that it was real and it wasn’t a scam,” Halva said. ​“We were targeting people on the residential side who had written off getting solar because there was no way it was affordable.”

Once households decided to move forward, some faced new challenges. One common example: Many applicants had old roofs that needed to be updated before panels could be attached. Last fiscal year alone, Illinois Solar for All funded 88 roof replacements.

Things were a bit different for nonprofits and public facilities. Even if those organizations wanted to take advantage of Solar for All in the early years, the economics weren’t always on their side, because, as tax-exempt organizations, they could not access the federal tax credits for solar. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act changed that — but it didn’t change the fact that these organizations were not very familiar with solar energy.

“So they hadn’t looked into it,” Halva said. ​“We ended up doing a lot of baseline solar education because we were reaching out to parties who had no market for it before.”

Crisis Nursery’s participation in the program is an example of this kind of outreach. Illinois Solar for All administrators contacted the nursery staff, encouraging them to participate and arranging a lease agreement with a solar developer in which the nonprofit paid nothing up front.

“We have a 10,000-square-foot building, so every little bit helps, especially during seasons when we are running our utilities” around the clock, said the nursery’s executive director Stephanie Record. ​“A lot of businesses may be able to alter their temperatures when people aren’t there to conserve energy. We have to be at that constant level of heating and cooling 24/7.”

Success from the grassroots

Nearly 400 Illinois Solar for All projects went online last fiscal year, representing over 700 different building units.

There are now projects in almost every county in the state, unlike in 2023, when they were concentrated in the Chicago area, along with a band across the center of the state. Changes made in the past program year allowed projects for nonprofits and public facilities in census tracts adjacent to income-eligible and environmental justice counties to qualify. The areas designated as environmental justice communities also increased.

“These sorts of things matter a lot in who we can approach,” Halva said.

Illinois Solar for All projects can be developed only by solar companies that have been vetted and approved by the state.

In the program’s early days, few companies went through this process. Solar workforce training and entrepreneurship programs were created and funded by the state’s 2017 clean energy law, but it took a while for administrators to successfully create a system to match developers with trainees.

The workforce is much more robust today. Thirteen companies developed the Illinois Solar for All projects energized or developed last year, and a state website helps dozens of such approved vendors connect with clients.

Another key to the program’s success is its ​“grassroots educators” — community leaders paid by the state to raise awareness. Last fiscal year, almost $700,000 was awarded to 10 community organizations to hire grassroots educators for one-year stints. Nine of those groups have new funding for the work this year.

Three years ago, Aretha Berdell became a grassroots educator in the Garfield Park neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, after she got rooftop solar through a separate state program called Illinois Shines. She often recruits people at events run by the Garfield Park Community Council, where she works as a sustainable housing associate, or by other local groups. It typically takes six or seven conversations before residents feel comfortable moving forward with solar, she said.

“I always tell my story — I haven’t paid [local utility] ComEd since last year,” she said. ​“We’re getting the word out. Especially if they’re seniors and don’t have access to the computer, I’m just helping them out, moving them along.”

In and around the small southern Illinois city of Marion, the program — and Halva’s work as a grassroots educator — have led to solar arrays on a church, a local fire station, a senior center, a youth center, and a city-owned recreation facility called The Hub. The solar array on Zion United Church of Christ​’s carport has saved thousands of dollars, which the church spends on its food pantry, providing hundreds of meals every Sunday and hundreds of bags of food each week. 

Ellie Simpson, another grassroots educator, focuses on outreach to houses of worship, on behalf of Eco DioChicago, the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago’s organization for environmental justice and ​“creation care committee” — responsible for acting as stewards of the Earth. She said multiple church representatives contact her each month, ​“interested in starting the conversation about what it means to care for creation,” and using solar to reduce their carbon footprint and redirect funds from energy bills to pastoral work.

The personalized guidance that a grassroots educator can offer is crucial in working with faith-based groups, Simpson noted, since they range from organizations with large endowments able to make big investments to small entities with board members cautious of approving any expenditures.

“Some move quickly, some move slower,” she said. ​“Nonprofits and churches all have their own pace.”

Illinois Solar for All is entering into a new era this fiscal year. It will be the first time that federal incentives are unavailable — and administrators are still figuring out how to adjust, Schmidt said.

One bright spot is that many of the program’s arrays are developed as third-party ownership arrangements, in which solar developers own an array and provide the energy to the resident or organization — and those projects can still access federal tax incentives if they are operational by the end of 2027, or if they started construction before July 4 of this year.

In any case, state law calls for $50 million in funding each year for Illinois Solar for All. With that in mind, Schmidt said the program will be able to adjust to fill some gaps left by federal changes.

“We look at different potential funding pieces of a project, and if things change, we update,” Schmidt said. ​“Illinois Solar for All is not going anywhere.”