The Energy News Network is powered by support from readers like you. Please give today and help us keep our news open and accessible for all.

Every morning, the Energy News Network compiles the top stories about the clean energy transition and delivers them to your inbox for free. Sign up today!

Region Midwest Energy News Southeast Energy News Northeast Energy News Western Energy News U.S. Energy News

This story is the first in a two-part series co-published by the Energy News Network and the Southern Illinoisan. Read part one: In Southern Illinois, people see a land of possibility with just transition from coal.

In a sunlit, airy sanctuary in the town of Marion in far Southern Illinois, Pastor Wade Halva told the tale of Paul in jail: staying in the cell even when he could have escaped, in hopes he could convert the jailer. Halva lauded Paul’s steadfastness, the value of taking chances and having faith.

“Paul takes a risk in staying in the jail cell,” Halva told his congregants. “Like when people refuse to give up on their neighborhood and go somewhere safer or nicer or with more resale value — when people say, ‘We’re staying.’”

The parable could symbolize the crossroads facing coal communities across Southern Illinois. The coal economy that has sustained them is in a seemingly inevitable decline, as the world pivots to cleaner power sources. Places like Marion could fade, too, as people and opportunities migrate elsewhere. Or the people who call them home will help reinvent their economies. 

For years, Illinois clean energy advocates, community leaders and legislators have tried to shepherd a “just transition” from coal to clean energy, with programs and legislation aimed at sparking solar and other jobs in the areas most affected by fossil fuels’ decline. 

That transition is happening slower than some would like in Southern Illinois, which faces greater cultural, economic and regulatory barriers than other parts of the state. Slowly but surely, though, signs of change are appearing, and there’s growing faith that a new, clean energy economy will find a foothold thanks to people like Halva, who has made it a part of his personal mission. 

“People can see a change,” said Halva, who is also Southern Illinois outreach coordinator for Faith in Place, a statewide interfaith organization focused on sustainability and justice.

“To see that the city is investing in long-range projects gives people confidence, and solar is a longer-range project.” 

The Marion area is home to both a massive coal-fired power plant and one of Illinois’ largest underground coal mines, Pond Creek. Both have taken their toll on public health and the environment, even as the number of jobs they offer dwindles. 

The Southern Illinois Power Cooperative plant, looming over the picturesque Lake of Egypt, shut down its largest unit in 2020. It needs to close entirely by 2030 under the state’s clean energy law passed last fall. Meanwhile, the Pond Creek mine is allowed to continue releasing contaminated water into the Big Muddy River, under recently issued state permits. 

The closure of the SIPC and other coal plants means jobs and generation will need to be replaced. Solar incentives and job training programs in last fall’s Climate and Equitable Jobs Act and the 2017 Future Energy Jobs Act are designed to help spur those, but the solar industry has been slow to take off in Southern Illinois compared to other parts of the state.

Data from the Illinois Power Agency, which administers the incentives, shows that installations under the Future Energy Jobs Act are concentrated primarily around Chicago, Rockford and Champaign-Urbana in northern and central Illinois, plus the metro area around St. Louis. A separate incentive program for solar in environmental justice and low-income areas, called Illinois Solar for All, similarly saw projects concentrated around Chicago and Champaign-Urbana, with only a handful of projects approved for schools, a hospital and a church in Southern Illinois.

Marion is a rare bright spot in the region, with 10 community solar installations helping it rank sixth out of 670 zip codes statewide in terms of megawatts of solar incentives secured.

Driving through Marion’s historic downtown, Halva described investment in solar as part of an overall revitalization. Colorful murals decorate newly rehabbed buildings around the town square, where a plaque declares Marion “the hub of the universe.” A mural on the back of a pizzeria celebrates Italian immigrant coal miners of decades past. 

Statewide, coal mine employment has plummeted from more than 50,000 miners in 1930 to about 3,000 today. As other industries have also moved or shrank, the region has seen steady population loss and economic decline. But Marion is now gaining population, and arts centers and a co-working space are helping make downtown lively again.

“To see that the city is investing in long-range projects gives people confidence,” Halva said, “and solar is a longer-range project.”

Halva’s church is in the process of getting solar panels through Illinois Solar for All, which allows nonprofits and families to get solar installations with basically no up-front costs and considerable savings on energy bills. Elevate, the organization that runs the program, said an average family with an Illinois Solar for All array saves over $900 a year.

At Halva’s First Presbyterian Church, solar fits with larger goals of sustainability and community support. A garden out back provided 350 pounds of produce to help ease food insecurity during the pandemic last year, and they’ve overhauled the church for energy efficiency. 

After his service, Halva walked through a grassy field to show visitors the ground-mounted solar panels behind St. Joseph Catholic Church, an effort that has provided inspiration for Halva’s own congregation. 

“It’s proof of concept,” Halva said. “People want to know what it does for your bills — I can say go talk to Father Brian.” 

Another ground-mounted solar installation is tucked behind a liquor store. And rooftop panels decorate some homes, including ones built through Habitat for Humanity. Halva is working with civic leaders to try to get Illinois Solar for All installations on public housing in Marion, either on a high-rise apartment building downtown or on the grounds of a 64-unit development of brick duplexes.

“It seems like a no-brainer to put solar on subsidized housing,” he said. 

On the flat, expansive roof of Southern Illinois University’s engineering building, Justin Harrell stepped over puddles as he surveyed the array of 220 sleek black solar panels that provide up to 108 kilowatts of electricity, connected to a small microgrid. On this rainy day, the battery bank and controls located in a shipping container on the ground showed the panels were generating 7.5 kilowatts. 

The panels, installed last fall, are part of a foray into clean energy for a university long known for its research on “clean coal” technology, in a town — Carbondale — literally named for its role in the coal trade.

SIU leads a new regional consortium that was among 22 groups nationwide chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy for its Local Energy Action Program, known as LEAP, wherein the federal agency will provide technical assistance to help areas embrace clean energy with equity.

“It’s all kind of squishy and amorphous at the moment, but hopefully it’s going to be a big change,” said Harrell, SIU’s facilities and energy management senior engineer. The initiative has SIU partnering with the city of Carbondale, the local NAACP and other groups.

From the engineering building’s roof, one can see the university’s coal-burning power plant, which generates steam for the sprawling campus-wide heating and cooling system, and co-generates up to 2.5 MW of electricity with the waste heat. Unlike the state’s larger coal plants, it is small enough that it is not required to close. The plant consumes about 50,000 tons of coal a year from a nearby underground mine.

Clean energy advocates would like to see the coal plant shut down, as would Harrell, but he said replacing the steam-driven district heating-cooling system — with six miles of pipes under campus — would be a massive, multimillion-dollar undertaking that must be done gradually in stages. 

SIU has another solar array near the power plant, installed back in 2004. And Harrell is planning for more. He is toying with the idea of solar panels floating on the campus’s 42-acre lake, noting that it could host a larger array than building roofs.

“We’re figuring out how to keep the ducks and students off them. I don’t know which would be more challenging,” he laughed. 

Harrell also spent several years investigating the potential for a wind turbine on campus. There are threatened and endangered bats living in the area, so the university undertook a federally mandated study with volunteers searching for dead bats to predict wind turbine impacts. But financing for the wind turbine fell through and Harrell scrapped the idea. 

He and others hope the university can become a leader in clean energy education, just as it has been in coal. In a classroom overlooking the solar panels, students use monitors to study the panels’ output and microgrid operations. And the school is drafting its first climate action plan.

“We get a lot of push from the student body to be more sustainable,” Harrell said. “There’s a lot of momentum building.” 

“People are being able to see that this is an industry getting ready to bloom.” 

Not far from the Southern Illinois University campus sits the Carbondale police station, buffered on two sides by black and silver solar panels contrasting with emerald green grass and yellow wildflowers. The city’s wastewater treatment plant and civic center are also powered by solar, all by Bloomington, Illinois-based StraightUp Solar in partnership with union contractor Burke Electric.

StraightUp Solar project developer Saxon Metzger is a transplant from a beachfront town in Southern California who was drawn to Southern Illinois by the natural beauty, the allure of four seasons, and the affordability. Before working for StraightUp Solar, Metzger worked for the city of Carbondale developing its sustainability plan and organizing a solar group buy, wherein residents band together for cheaper prices.

Metzger thinks environmental awareness as well as finances are fueling a growing local interest in solar.

“The growing season in Southern Illinois has been extended” by climate change, “which seems like it might be good, but it introduces a huge element of uncertainty and chaos,” Metzger said. “We’re having hotter summers, and winters that don’t freeze and kill off pests in the same way they used to. There’s a huge temperate shift happening with more rain. The consequences of these changes are no longer theoretical.” 

Metzger’s colleague in promoting solar in the heart of coal country is Brent Ritzel, a Carbondale native who returned to his hometown after publishing magazines in Chicago; then selling mortgages in Colorado — during the mortgage crisis; and Christian trading cards — “the perfect job for an Atheist,” he said. Ritzel feels confident solar will only grow and become more profitable and accessible for the region. He noted the police station is predicted to save at least a million dollars in energy bills over the life of the panels. 

“People are being able to see that this is an industry getting ready to bloom,” Metzger said. 

Advanced Energy Solutions, or AES, based in Carterville, is one of the only solar developers based in far Southern Illinois. 

Founder and CEO Aur Beck has been doing solar in the region for 24 years, starting when there was very little solar anywhere in Illinois. He also hosts a solar- and sustainability-focused weekly radio show on WDBX, Carbondale’s independent radio station. Beck hires union electricians for installations, and runs a jobs program called Coal to Sol, though he doesn’t see many workers coming from the coal industry. He concurs that solar is becoming increasingly popular in Southern Illinois.

“We’ve sold more business since the end of March than all of last year,” Beck said in early May. “Last year we sold twice what we did the year before, and we just hired two more people. This is definitely happening.”

“We’re seeing this [energy] transition across the country, around the globe; we want to make sure Illinois is at the forefront of that transition.” 

The deep-seated cultural identification with coal has made it harder to spur interest in solar in Southern Illinois. 

Halva said coal and solar are often seen “as battling each other.” 

“If you’re saying coal is bad, people feel like you’re saying ‘I’m bad, my grandfather’s bad, my family is bad for how we’ve put food on the table.’”

It’s not the only complicating factor for the region’s clean energy transition. Laura Oakleaf, associate director of Illinois Solar for All at Elevate, said they’ve struggled to find qualified contractors wanting to participate in Southern Illinois. “Having the contractors in the area makes the difference in the number of projects we’ve seen in the Chicago area versus downstate,” Oakleaf said. 

The fact that much of the region is served by electric cooperatives, rather than investor-owned utilities, makes it harder to access incentives and facilitate interconnection to the grid. Disproportionately lower-income rural residents lack the capital to invest in solar or make needed structural upgrades to roofs. And there is little charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, which are quickly taking off in tandem with solar installations in other parts of the state. 

Despite all these challenges, Halva and other local leaders hope solar will become increasingly popular in Southern Illinois, especially since the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act restarted the incentives that had run out under the Future Energy Jobs Act, and created new just transition-related funds and job training. 

Savings from rooftop or community solar could be especially helpful as electricity prices are expected to keep rising. Ameren Illinois, the utility that serves many Southern Illinoisans, has said its electricity prices will climb steeply this summer and beyond, largely because of the retirement of coal plants driving up prices in the regional markets where Illinois utilities get their power. 

If solar business takes off, there will be more jobs in solar installation and the related fields: marketing, sales, administration, policy. And there will need to be more training for these jobs. Solar training in Southern Illinois currently happens on a largely ad hoc basis. When Kyle Burke needs electricians to do installations with StraightUp Solar, he hires thems from the IBEW union hall and often trains them himself on the nuances of solar. 

“There definitely needs to be more training,” Burke said. “There should be more training on the [union] apprenticeship side — so they turn out journeyman workers who are ready to go, and the burden is taken off contractors.” 

Community colleges in the region don’t have regular solar training programs, but John A. Logan Community College in Carterville has placed students in internships where they do solar work with construction companies, paid by the college. Outreach coordinator Tisha Kosco and a local construction contractor recently hosted a solar training at Logan, with online courses and two eight-hour, on-site workshops. Currently six students are doing solar-related internships, Kosco said. She thinks construction and electrical companies are “excited” about the growth of solar.

“They’re seeing the need, and a little worried they’re not going to have the workforce to handle it,” she said. “We probably need to focus more on the mindset in the area — get students excited with some more publicity, facts and figures, testimonies, build some buzz.”

The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act tasked the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity with creating 13 “workforce hubs” statewide, where a clean energy jobs curriculum being developed by the department — with local input — will be administered by local partners like community organizations or community colleges. Contractor incubators, providing technical support and mentorship for contractors who want to get into solar, will be in the same locations. One of the hubs will be in Carbondale. Clean energy is a relatively new focus for an agency long known as an ardent backer of the state’s coal industry. 

“We have a five-year economic plan focused on key growth industries, how we can prepare the workforce into the future,” said Sylvia Garcia, director of the state agency. “We’re seeing this [energy] transition across the country, around the globe; we want to make sure Illinois is at the forefront of that transition.”

Kathy Lively is CEO of Man-Tra-Con, a workforce development company based in Marion serving five Southern Illinois counties. She’s worked with some coal miners and power plant workers who’ve lost their jobs, and expects the number of such displaced workers to increase. 

The coal workers she’s dealt with thus far have often become nurses or line workers for utilities — highly physical jobs with pay closer to mining. Currently, solar jobs don’t compare to mining in salary or job satisfaction, she said. But she thinks that will change — both for coal workers shifting careers and young Southern Illinoisans. 

“A lot of our youth don’t think there are many exciting — for lack of a better term — jobs here,” she said. “That’s why I look forward to a growing green sector. Those would be the kind of jobs that would encourage you to train at our community college system, and the kind of jobs that make you want to stay here, too.” 

Kari has written for the Energy News Network since January 2011. She is an author and journalist who worked for the Washington Post's Midwest bureau from 1997 through 2009. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Chicago News Cooperative, Chicago Reader and other publications. Based in Chicago, Kari covers Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana as well as environmental justice topics.

The Energy News Network is an editorially independent project of