Sergio Mendez was tired of earning a living by working security in nightclubs. So the 22-year-old resident of Chicago’s Southwest Side decided to make a big change, enrolling in a 10-week program that promised to teach him the fundamental skills needed to pursue a career in the solar industry.

“I was just dealing with a lot of drunk people. I wanted to get out of it,” Mendez said of his former job. Now he envisions a future as a solar salesperson or installer. In late December, he graduated alongside six other young adults enrolled in the course, run by Elevate, a national clean-energy nonprofit based in Chicago.

Illinois has emerged as a solar leader in recent years, thanks in large part to its robust incentives and its mandates that utilities get an increasing amount of electricity from renewables. In 2024, the state ranked fourth nationwide in terms of new solar capacity, with over 2,800 megawatts installed, and it added another 815 megawatts in the first three quarters of 2025, according to a December report by consultancy Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The industry’s momentum translates to lots of employment opportunities: The Solar Energy Industries Association counted almost 6,000 solar jobs in Illinois in 2025, and it projects that the state will add close to another 15,000 megawatts of solar over the next five years.

“With energy demand growing — some would say, out of control — solar is the fastest [generation source] to deploy,” said J.D. Smith, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin-based solar installer Arch Electric. ​“From a technical standpoint, if you’re trying to power the grid, [solar] is such a good decision. You can get it cheap and fast, and it’s repeatable.”

Companies expanding to meet that demand are eager to snap up graduates of workforce development programs.

In the past year, Arch — one of the employers at a December job fair for Mendez and his peers — has hired 14 graduates of training programs run by Elevate and other Chicago-area nonprofits. Seven of those individuals are already in apprenticeships to become certified electricians.

“If you know at least 50% of the people you hire from these organizations will want to be an apprentice and invest in their future with your organization, that makes it a business no-brainer,” Smith said.

Solar companies also rely on training programs to produce qualified candidates from what the state has defined as ​“equity” communities, he explained. Under Illinois’ 2021 clean-energy law, firms can access incentives for hiring individuals from these areas, which face disproportionate amounts of pollution and have historically been excluded from economic opportunities.