From an early age, JC Kibbey knew the impact a lack of clean air can have. Growing up in the shadow of coal plants in Lansing, Michigan, he often found himself dealing with respiratory illnesses, the result of exposure to pollution. And when one of those plants closed, he watched as people lost their jobs.

That’s all been on Kibbey’s mind in his role as the state climate adviser for Illinois, a position he assumed last December after five years at the Natural Resources Defense Council. At the top of his agenda? Helping the state spend a $430 million federal grant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution — part of President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation. The funds are expected to help Illinois cut an estimated 57 million tons of emissions by 2050, but Kibbey argues that the state’s energy transition has benefits far beyond curbing climate change.

How are you planning on using that $430 million?

For a long time, when we talked about cutting emissions, folks thought just about the power sector, like wind and solar technologies. But we’re looking at transportation, which is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state today. We’re looking at buildings, homes, and businesses that are burning fossil fuels onsite. We’re looking at industry, agriculture, and land use. The largest portion — 40 percent — will be allocated to expanding access to and deployment of clean energy technologies in buildings. Things like heat pumps reduce climate pollution but also lower bills and make homes more comfortable. One focus is going to be on disadvantaged communities, people with lower incomes. We want to make sure that the benefits of the clean energy economy are shared with everyone.

If transportation is the largest emissions source, how do you address that?

The second-largest share of the funds in this grant is going toward the transportation sector. We’re focusing on heavy-duty vehicles, like trucks. While they are a relatively small percentage of the vehicles on the road, they contribute an outsized amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution and pollutants that harm human health. There’s been a lot of great research, including in Chicago, looking at how this disproportionately tends to impact disadvantaged communities, people of color, and people with low incomes.

How do you make sure everyone, from corporations to everyday citizens, takes advantage of the initiatives you’re creating?

The first thing is a program to train more contractors on energy efficiency and clean energy technologies like heat pumps and induction stoves. The more contractors are familiar with these, the more people are going to come into contact with them. We will also have an online portal that will be funded as part of the grant. You’ll enter a bit of information and see all of the stuff you are eligible for: federal tax credits, state tax credits, rebates, money through this Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, utility credits. The idea is that you can go to one place to get all the resources and make that application as streamlined as possible. The other piece is a clean building navigator program, which is where we give community-based organizations the opportunity to do this outreach and to talk to people about the opportunities that are out there. If you want to get the tax credits, if you need a good contractor, they can walk you through that process.

This is an election year. How could politics affect the success of your plan?

We are fortunate to have leadership in the governor’s office and in the state legislature that really understands the importance of climate action. It is not an abstraction. It impacts our day-to-day lives. We see it in the heat waves in Chicago, in the tragic floods along the Mississippi River in recent years, and in the droughts that impact farmers. Those impacts are very real. And the jobs that are getting created in these clean energy sectors provide real economic benefits. When you look at the poll numbers, almost everybody, no matter the party, wants more clean energy.

We generate about 14 percent of our power through renewable sources, specifically solar and wind. [More than half of Illinois’s power is generated by nuclear energy, which is clean but not renewable.] That puts us behind many other states. Why is that?

There were several years there, prior to our current governor being in office, when the renewable portfolio standard was basically broken. We have made good progress, but we’re still playing a bit of catch-up. We need to be setting the stage so that it is easy for clean energy to come on to the grid and interconnect to it. There is also work to be done on making sure that our electric grid and our transmission systems are set up to deploy clean energy at the speed that we want to and at the speed that we’ve legislated.

But power sector infrastructure isn’t part of the plan for the grant money. Why not?

The way that it was laid out by the U.S. EPA, the grant was a way to resource investments in clean energy that were not getting resourced well currently. Under the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act [a 2021 state law], we’re already investing around $580 million per year in the power sector. The goal is to start to bring some of those other sectors up to this level of investment.

Beyond helping preserve our climate, how does this grant affect individual Chicago residents?

If you look at the map of Chicago’s pollution hot spots, it can literally mean cleaner air in your community. If we can put more electric trucks on the road, that will make a real difference at an individual level. And this grant is a way to make clean energy technologies more affordable and more available. They can save you money. They can make your house healthier. They can make your life easier. This is about real improvements in people’s lives, here and now.

Electric Strides

Kibbey’s big goal for Illinois? “Clean up the power sector, then electrify everything.” Here’s how the state is faring — and how far it still needs to go.

100%

Target share of the electric grid generated by carbon-free sources by 2045

66%

Share currently carbon-free

14%

Share generated by wind or solar

0%

Share generated by hydro (despite the presence of Lake Michigan, because of the flat terrain)

52%

Share generated by nuclear power (carbon-free but not renewable), higher than any other state

1 million

Target number of electric vehicles on the road in Illinois by 2030

111,000

Registered electric vehicles now