At 15, Kyle Barber started working at the Captain coal mine in southern Illinois — ​“following in the footsteps of my forefathers,” he says.

It was 1996, and the mine was closing, so his job involved swinging sledgehammers and scrambling down dangerously steep hillsides to retrieve huge rolls of discarded chain-link fence. He knew this was not the industry he wanted to spend his life working in.

Barber had long been fascinated by clean energy; he even won a grade school contest designing a solar canopy to go over highways. After graduating from college, he connected with the southern Illinois solar company AES to learn the trade, and in 2010 founded his own solar company, EFS. In 2017, he began teaching in a solar workforce training program in Peoria, Illinois, that was created by the state’s Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA), which went into effect that same year.

Now, Barber is spreading the gospel of solar from the Scott Bibb Center at Lewis and Clark Community College in the southwestern Illinois city of Alton, on the banks of the Mississippi River. It’s one of 14 clean energy jobs hubs created by the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), successor to FEJA. And it shows how even in the wake of dire federal cuts to clean energy programs, a well-funded and thoughtfully implemented state program can foster a robust transition to renewables on the local level.

Barber has been on the faculty at Lewis and Clark since February 2020, originally teaching classes on solar through a program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. After the pandemic, Barber saw interest in the solar training program surge. CEJA allowed the school to bolster its offerings with wraparound social services and basic education, helping a wider range of students overcome barriers and prepare for careers in the industry.

Darling was this summer named manager of the Alton CEJA hub based at Lewis and Clark. Barber teaches classes there and also owns the residential and commercial solar company BKJ, having sold his interest in EFS.

Another of Barber’s proteges, Austin Frank, founded a solar company called ARF that installed a 100-kilowatt array on the Bibb Center roof. Thanks to federal and state incentives and labor donated by Frank’s company, the system cost the school nothing and saves the institution about $5,000 a month in energy bills, covering 40% of the building’s energy, he said. Frank has hired multiple graduates from Lewis and Clark.

“It all starts with Kyle,” said Darling. ​“It’s like vertical integration. We’re training people in solar, getting contractors set up, and then we have solar on the roof.”

Transitioning from coal

For six decades, residents of Alton breathed pollution from the nearby Wood River coal plant. The plant closed in 2016, taking around 90 jobs with it, and the facility was spectacularly imploded in 2021. Clean energy advocates have proposed a solar farm be built on the site.

Alton was founded more than 200 years ago at the confluence of the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers. The city was once a booming industrial and commercial center, but its fortunes have declined as has its population, which now hovers near 25,000, though a smattering of trendy breweries, restaurants, and antique stores attract visitors from the St. Louis area and beyond.

The college qualified to be a workforce training hub under CEJA because the Alton area is home to a closed coal plant and because the state has deemed that the community was historically excluded from economic opportunities. CEJA prioritizes job creation and clean energy deployment in such spots, to make sure the clean energy transition benefits those who were harmed by or left out of the fossil fuel economy. 

Advocates applauded the law’s impact at a celebration of the Alton hub at Lewis and Clark last month. ​“Now because of CEJA,” said Francisco Lopez Zavala, climate policy program associate of the Illinois Environmental Council, hubs like the community college ​“are helping to build Illinois’s clean energy future, which in turn makes our air easier to breathe, our communities healthier, and our grid more resilient.”

Under CEJA, students are paid to take the clean energy and related basic skills courses. At Lewis and Clark, students can choose from four tracks: solar, energy efficiency, HVAC/ heat pumps, and a Climate Works pre-apprenticeship program affiliated with labor unions. Since launching last fall, the school’s program has graduated 57 students in 10 cohorts — five focused on solar, one on energy efficiency, one on HVAC, and three in pre-apprenticeship. Ninety-five percent of enrolled students have graduated, and eight companies, including ARF, have already hired graduates.

CEJA also sets aside money to reduce barriers for students, who can apply for funding for everything from car repairs and bus passes to electric bills and child care. This opportunity lasts for a full year after graduation. Each hub has a navigator organization that administers the aid; in Alton’s case, that’s Senior Services Plus, a social service agency that helps people of all ages.