Illinois Green Policy Update: October 2025

I’m incredibly proud to announce Illinois Green’s latest initiative: The Illinois Clean Building Commitment!

This effort aims to help local communities protect residents from rising energy costs, lower public health risks, create green jobs, and set themselves up for a resilient future.

To do so, we want to reach local policymakers across the state and let them know how to bring green buildings to their community. By providing education on green buildings and technology, sharing existing energy incentives and opportunities, and creating a pathway for policy action, we will help local leaders across the state become green building champions.

Here's how professionals can support this work:

• Share the Commitment with your local representatives! Hearing from industry voices is crucial — especially if you have any connections.
• Help us demonstrate the value of green buildings by sharing any project examples, case studies, fact sheets, or other valuable information.
• Know about any other green resources or tools for communities? Let us know!

Illinois state legislators are working to pass the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, a large scale energy package intended to protect consumers from increased demand from data centers and build resilience by improving grid connections and more. 

Some key features of the legislation include:
•  Removing barriers that make it difficult and slow to connect new clean power to the grid,
•  Funding both large-scale battery storage and ‘virtual power plants’,
•  Increasing utility spending on energy efficiency programs,
•  Require utilities to share energy data for entire buildings, allowing buildings to understand their energy use and create savings plans,

Read more about the legislation here!

The latest energy code is ready for Illinois to adopt, but we need the help of building industry leaders to let legislators know why a strong code is important!



This new energy code would save $133-$309 for the average Illinois household in a new home, depending on their location in IL and gives designers more flexible options for compliance to support affordable, abundant housing development. Some Illinois amendments also will make it cheaper for businesses to electrify by adding limited electric readiness requirements and fuel debiasing language.

The 2024 IECC was developed with input from collaboration from stakeholders across the industry and the Illinois Capital Development Board recommended its adoption after an open input process. 

Learn more about the code and tell key legislators that the building industry supports strong codes!

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