Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard: Targets, Compliance, and Deadlines

The Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard requires electric utilities to source a rising share of their retail electricity from renewable sources, reaching 40% by the 2030 delivery year and 50% by 2040, with the state’s power sector required to be fully carbon-free by 2045.¹ The Illinois Power Agency runs centralized procurements of renewable energy credits on behalf of utilities, and the Illinois Commerce Commission reviews annual compliance reports from the retail suppliers that serve Illinois customers.

The Targets and How They Ramp Up

The original 2007 law set a 25% renewable target for the delivery year beginning June 1, 2025. The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act of 2021 raised the ceiling. From 2025 forward, the required share climbs by at least three percentage points each year until it reaches 40% by the 2030 delivery year, and the IPA is directed to pursue 50% by 2040.¹ The statute also calls for 45 million renewable energy credits delivered annually from new projects by the end of the 2030 delivery year.

The percentages are only part of the design. The statute tells the IPA how to split the money across technologies. At least 45% of new renewable energy credits must come from wind, repowered wind, and hydropower. At least 55% must come from solar photovoltaic projects. Inside that solar slice, at least 50% has to go to distributed and community solar, at least 47% to utility-scale solar, and at least 3% to solar built on brownfield sites.¹

Those carve-outs change what gets built. Before CEJA, the Illinois mix leaned heavily toward wind. Now solar carries the larger share of new procurement, and a defined chunk of solar money is reserved for rooftop and community projects that reach households and small businesses directly rather than only utility-scale arrays.

How Compliance Actually Works

Since the Future Energy Jobs Act’s 2017 transition, compliance is measured in renewable energy credits rather than direct delivery of renewable electricity. One REC represents one megawatt-hour of qualifying renewable generation. The IPA buys RECs on behalf of utilities through competitive procurement events, and those credits are retired to show that the required percentage of customer load has been met.²

The procurement blueprint is the IPA’s Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan, updated annually. It sets how much the agency will procure, which technologies, and on what schedule.³ Winning bidders receive long-term contracts, which gives developers the revenue certainty needed to finance projects that take years to build.

Annual Reporting to the Illinois Commerce Commission

Retail electric suppliers serving Illinois customers file annual compliance reports with the ICC by September 1 each year, covering the delivery year that ended on May 31. The reports have to show the total metered electricity supplied to retail customers, the number of RECs retired for compliance, and any alternative compliance payments made, broken down by utility service territory.⁴ Each report must be verified under oath by an executive officer of the supplier.⁵

Alternative Compliance Payments

When a supplier falls short of its obligation, it can make an alternative compliance payment instead of procuring the missing RECs. The rate is set through the ICC.⁶ The ACP is the enforcement backbone: it is priced to be more expensive than buying RECs on the open market, so compliance is the cheaper path. Money collected through ACPs flows back into renewable procurement, meaning that a shortfall still funds new project development.⁷

Fossil Fuel Closure Deadlines

CEJA pairs the renewable targets with statutory deadlines for retiring fossil generation. All privately owned coal and oil-fired power plants in Illinois must reach zero carbon emissions or close by January 1, 2030. Publicly owned coal plants and all natural gas plants, whether private or municipal, face the same requirement by 2045. Those deadlines carve out guaranteed market space for the renewable projects the IPA is procuring.

Illinois Solar for All

Illinois Solar for All is the equity-focused companion to the broader RPS. Created by FEJA in 2016 and expanded under CEJA, it helps low-income households, nonprofits, and community centers access rooftop and community solar without upfront costs.⁸ CEJA raised the program’s annual budget from roughly $10 million to $50 million and expanded eligibility to include environmental justice communities.⁹

For a qualifying household, that typically means a solar installation that reduces the electric bill with no money down. Renters and people whose rooftops are not suitable can subscribe to a community solar project and receive credits on their bills from a shared array.

The Three Laws Behind the Current System

Three statutes shaped what the RPS looks like now. The Illinois Power Agency Act of 2007 created both the RPS and the IPA itself, an independent state agency responsible for developing electricity procurement plans for the state’s large investor-owned utilities, and set the original 25% by 2025 target.¹⁰

FEJA, signed in 2016, rebuilt the plumbing. It moved compliance away from a fragmented system where individual alternative retail electric suppliers each carried their own obligations and consolidated procurement under the IPA. It also began collecting RPS funding across all retail electric sales, which substantially increased the budget available for new projects.² FEJA invested more than $750 million in low-income community programs and launched Illinois Solar for All.⁸

CEJA, passed in 2021, raised the targets to 40% by 2030 and 50% by 2040, added diversity, equity, and labor standards to procurement requirements, expanded Solar for All, and set the 2045 carbon-free power sector deadline on the way to 100% clean energy by 2050.⁹

Federal Tax Credits That Stack on Top

Federal incentives make projects bidding into IPA procurements more economic. Starting in 2025, two technology-neutral credits replaced the older production and investment tax credits for clean electricity.

The Clean Electricity Production Credit under Section 45Y provides a base credit of 0.3 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced and sold, rising to 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour when the project meets federal prevailing wage and registered apprenticeship requirements.¹¹ The Clean Electricity Investment Credit under Section 48E offers a base of 6% of the qualified investment, rising to 30% when the same labor standards are met.¹²

Projects can earn more. Using enough domestically produced steel, iron, and manufactured components adds 10 percentage points to the investment credit or a 10% boost to the production credit.¹³ Projects sited in designated energy communities, often former coal or fossil fuel areas, qualify for another 10-point bonus on the investment credit, and several Illinois communities are positioned to qualify as the state’s coal plant closure timeline plays out.

Meeting the prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements is worth five times the base credit amount, so hitting those labor standards is effectively mandatory for a developer that wants competitive economics.¹⁴ Those federal labor requirements line up with CEJA’s own equity and workforce provisions.

Where the RPS Stands Now

The IPA released its 2026 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan in October 2025, and the ICC issued a final order approving it in February 2026.³ With the 25% threshold already in place and 40% four delivery years away, procurement has to accelerate. The IPA has acknowledged that earlier project delays, some stemming from COVID-era supply chain disruptions, created a gap between procurement targets and actual generation that the upcoming cycles need to close.⁹

1
Illinois General Assembly. 20 ILCS 3855/1-75
2
Illinois Power Agency. 2024 Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan
3
Illinois Power Agency. Long-Term Plan
4
Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Administrative Code 83.455.120 – Annual Report of Compliance with Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard
5
Illinois Commerce Commission. Renewable Portfolio Standards Requirements
6
Illinois General Assembly. Illinois Administrative Code Title 83 Part 455.130 – Alternative Compliance Payment Requirements
7
Illinois Commerce Commission. RPS Archived and Historic Alternative Compliance Payment Notices
8
Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. Future Energy Jobs Act
9
Illinois Power Agency. Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard Factsheet
10
Justia Law. Illinois Code Chapter 20, Act 20 ILCS 3855, Article 1
11
Internal Revenue Service. Clean Electricity Production Credit
12
Internal Revenue Service. Clean Electricity Investment Credit
13
Internal Revenue Service. Domestic Content Bonus Credit
14
Internal Revenue Service. Prevailing Wage and Apprenticeship Requirements