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The honored district will participate in the virtual Illinois Green School Celebration 3:30 p.m. May 21
The honored district will participate in the virtual Illinois Green School Celebration 3:30 p.m. May 21
Welcome to the March edition of the Illinois Green Policy Update. We're incredibly excited to share some important updates about our local outreach, bills in Springfield, state renewable energy progress, and more!
Strategies for Leveraging Net Zero Practices of Statewide Impact
Five years ago, Illinois Green Alliance launched a new strategic plan with a bold north star to guide our work: to make net zero buildings feasible, affordable, and so commonplace that every building in Illinois was net zero by 2050. Mainstreaming the technology and building methods, whether new or existing, is no easy feat. But we realized no one was better positioned to make it happen than green building professionals.Our focus over the last five years have been about laying the foundation necessary to meet our long-term vision and I’m excited to share the progress we’ve made. These past five years have been guided by three pillars: ● Educating industry professionals to ensure they have the expertise to use net zero building methods in their work and can help us raise awareness about their value with building owners and policy makers. ● Removing barriers by providing information about the technical, financial, social and policy roadblocks to net zero adoption and passing new laws that help to overcome these barriers. ● Demonstrating it can work everywhere by collaborating with building types in historically underinvested communities that are considered difficult to implement net zero methods. That focus has paid off, allowing us to meet many of the goals we set for our work across all of our strategies. For example:
At the start of 2025, I told our members that we can build a movement of green building advocates that can continue the progress made in Illinois for high-performance building, regardless of what happens in Washington D.C. Over the last year, you’ve proven me right. While elsewhere green building and clean energy goals have been put on pause, Illinois has continued the fight and won three huge victories that usher in historic investment in clean energy and green buildings and raise the bar for building performance, completely changing the landscape for what is possible in this industry.
