Ameren Illinois broke ground Tuesday on its East St. Louis Solar Energy Center, a $10.2 million, 2.5- megawatt facility that by 2023 will generate enough electricity to power 500 homes.
Richard Mark, Ameren Illinois chair and president, said the facility should also give a positive charge to East St. Louis’ economy.
“This is a historic event. We are building a more modern energy grid, and East St. Louis is at the heart of it,” Mark said.
“This is the first clean energy production facility like this in the state of Illinois, and the first power generation facility owned and operated by Ameren Illinois in the last 25 years.”
Located on a 17-acre blighted lot on State Street adjacent to East St. Louis High School, the site will offer educational opportunities for students throughout the area, according to Mark.
“We are developing an educational plan in partnership with East St. Louis School District 189,” he said.
“Students can gain practical learning experience in clean energy. They will look out of [the high school] windows and not see a vacant lot as it is, but as an opportunity.”
More than 5,700 solar panels will harness the sun’s energy which will be fed directly into the local grid. African American owned Mason Landscaping is partnering with Terra 5 Construction, Guarantee Electrical Company and Azimuth Energy to build the facility.
According to Ameren, the Solar Energy Center will create 40-50 construction jobs and deliver $50,000 annually in property taxes.
Mayor Robert Eastern III said Ameren, “brought the bacon home to East St. Louis.”
“We are taking land that was a blight, and making it bright,” he said.
“This is one of those projects that many people said, ‘couldn’t be done.’ We proved them wrong. We did it.”
The Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act passed on Sept. 9, 2021, after more than a year of negotiation. It was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on Sept. 15.
Among the provisions in the bill is $80 million in annual funding for programs that support workers and contractors from disadvantaged communities, which includes $34 million for a grant program to provide seed capital to emerging disadvantaged businesses.
The bill also invests $1 million for the Jobs and Justice Fund, a nonprofit “green bank” that will infuse disadvantaged businesses with capital; $21 million for 16 clean energy workforce training hubs across the state; $21 million for a system of contractor incubators to provide training and technical support to disadvantaged clean energy contractors; $9 million for contractor accelerators that will support further growth of clean energy businesses to become prime contractors and project developers; and $6 million for a training program for Illinoisans in penal institutions that are preparing for their return.
State Sen. Chris Belt said there was “strong opposition” to some of the provisions, adding it was a battle to keep the East St. Louis project as part of the legislation.
“This is huge. This represents rebirth. This is tangible. This is real,” he said.
“For too long East St. Louis has been passed over when it comes to economic development. This is about tax base and revenue. These will be family sustaining jobs. It is just tremendous for the area.”
Belt said he worked with state Rep. Latoya Greenwood, who was unable to attend the groundbreaking, to protect provisions essential to East St. Louis and its residents.
“I became a legislator to fight to ensure that Black and brown people in communities like ours, who have been overlooked, will no longer be passed over,” Greenwood said in a release.
“I am proud that East St. Louis will be at the center of a movement to build a clean energy foundation here in downstate Illinois.”
Mark added that Ameren Illinois has invested $86 million in East St. Louis in the last five years on projects including renovation of a 29,000 square foot operation, substation upgrades and smart grid projects to improve service reliability.
