This month’s newsletter looks at electrification from two angles. In Innovation Lane, we finally get to the Megawatt Charging System (MCS), the new standard that lets a Class 8 electric truck recharge during a driver’s 30-minute rest break, with hardware already in the ground in California and corridor sites announced along I-5 and I-10. In Board Insights, Tim Milburn walks us through the bigger picture: EVs are no longer just vehicles, they are nodes in an integrated energy ecosystem connecting drivers, chargers, solar, storage, the grid, and, increasingly, each other.
Both are genuine breakthroughs, and Illinois fleets should be paying close attention. But as Chair, I want to ask the question that doesn’t always fit in a technology column: Is megawatt charging the right answer for every Illinois fleet?
The honest answer is no, and that is exactly why IACT exists.
One Mission, Many Fuels
Illinois fleets do not share a single duty cycle. A drayage tractor pulling containers between Joliet and a Chicago intermodal yard has very different needs than a sleeper cab running Effingham to Memphis, a refuse truck on a tight urban route, a school bus parked overnight in a downstate district, or a landscaping crew working a county park system.
MCS will be transformative for some of those missions. For others, the right answer in 2026, and for years to come, will be renewable diesel as a drop-in fuel, RNG fueling a refuse fleet that already runs CNG, propane for school buses and light commercial, biodiesel blends for agricultural operations, or hydrogen as it matures along the corridor.
IACT is the only Illinois coalition deliberately built around that reality. We are technology-neutral by design. We help fleets ask the harder, more useful question: What fuel fits this mission, this duty cycle, this budget, this grid connection, this community?
Where Electrification is the Answer, Illinois Has an Unusual Advantage
Here is what makes the electrification pathway different from the others, and worth a closer look this month: When an Illinois fleet electrifies, a meaningful share of that investment comes back to Illinois. We are not just a consumer market for EVs. We are increasingly a builder of them.
Consider what has happened in Normal in the last two years alone:
- Rivian’s $1.5 billion investment to build its next-generation R2 SUV at the Normal facility, creating more than 550 new full-time jobs at wages set at 120% of comparable McLean County job classifications
- A $120 million Rivian supplier park announced in 2025—a 1.2 million-square-foot facility hosting EV suppliers, with roughly 100 additional direct jobs and hundreds more expected as the supplier network fills in
- A commitment to retain 6,000 jobs at the Normal complex across the life of the state’s REV agreement, anchoring central Illinois’s EV manufacturing base for decades, not quarters
And 90 miles south, in Decatur, an equally important story is unfolding in the EV supply chain. T/CCI Manufacturing—the very first recipient of a REV Illinois incentive package back in 2022—opened its $45 million Clean Energy Innovation Hub in April 2025. The project retooled T/CCI’s Decatur plant to produce electric compressors for EVs, retained 103 existing jobs, and added 50 new ones. Just as importantly, the Hub houses a Clean Energy Workforce Academy with Richland Community College and a Climatic Center for Innovation & Research opening this year, turning Decatur into a live testbed and training pipeline for the electric mobility supply chain. Illinois beat out international competition for that deal, and jobs that would have gone overseas are staying here.
That footprint is not accidental. It is the deliberate result of the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois (REV) Act, passed in 2021 specifically to attract EV and EV-supply-chain manufacturers to Illinois—capital investment, high-wage jobs, and workforce training pipelines, from the dual-credit apprenticeship program at Rivian in Normal to the Richland academy at T/CCI in Decatur.
Layer on the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act (CRGA), signed in January 2026 and effective June 1, and Illinois now has a matching grid-side framework, including battery storage, reliability investment, and the interconnection reforms that make Tim’s “integrated energy ecosystem” possible in practice, not just on paper. The rules being written right now will shape what fleets, utilities, and communities can actually do with V2X, solar-plus-storage-plus-charging, and depot electrification for years to come.
The implementation calendar matters here, and it is moving quickly—utility Virtual Power Plant tariffs, an initial 1,038 MW energy storage procurement, and Illinois’ first statewide Integrated Resource Plan all land between now and the end of the year. Members who want to track those dates can follow the Illinois Power Agency’s CRGA implementation page, which maintains the current schedule of filings, procurements, and comment opportunities.
Why This Matters Now
Several things are converging that make both the multi-fuel frame and the electrification opportunity especially timely:
- Every EV deployed in Illinois has an Illinois economic multiplier. When a fleet electrifies a route, some share of the vehicle, battery, and supply chain value now comes back to central Illinois. That was not true a decade ago, and it is a fundamentally different conversation to have with a mayor, an EDC, or a legislator.
- Illinois has 177,000 registered EVs today against a state goal of 1 million by 2030, roughly 18% of the way there with about four years to go. That gap is not a reason for pessimism; it is a reason to be honest about what closes it. Retail sales alone will not. Fleet adoption—school buses, transit, municipal, delivery, drayage, and eventually long-haul with MCS—is how Illinois gets from 177,000 to a million, and how it builds market pull for the vehicles its own workers are already making.
- CRGA is the enabling grid policy for everything Tim describes. Megawatt charging depots, bidirectional V2X pilots, and solar-plus-storage-plus-charging campuses all depend on interconnection timelines, tariff design, and storage rules now in motion. Fleets and site hosts who wait until the rules are finalized will be a step behind those who engage now.
- NEVI funding is flowing again in Illinois, and it now reaches freight. After the federal freeze in 2025 and a January 2026 court ruling permanently restoring the program across all 50 states, IDOT energized Illinois’ first NEVI-funded station in July at a Mach 1 travel center on Illinois 49 near I-70 in Casey—four 350 kW DC fast ports on the Electrify America network. More importantly for our members: Round 3 opened eligibility to medium- and heavy-duty charging along interstates, U.S. routes, and scenic byways, and a fourth round of roughly $30 million covering passenger and commercial vehicles has awards expected by the end of this month. Illinois has now conditionally awarded more than $67 million across 91 stations, working toward 489 public ports. For fleets weighing electrification, the corridor infrastructure question is finally getting a real answer, and it needs to be paired with honest analysis of where electrification fits and where it does not yet.
- The Clean Transportation Standard conversation in Springfield continues to evolve, and a credible Illinois standard has to account for every low-carbon pathway, not just one.
- Our fleet technical assistance pipeline keeps growing, with more Illinois operators asking IACT for help comparing options before they commit capital. That is the work, and it is the reason technology neutrality is a practical commitment rather than a slogan.
Save the Date: Fueling Illinois’ Freight Futures
This is the conversation we are building the 2027 Fueling Illinois’ Freight Futures summit around. Venue and dates will be announced later this year, and the agenda is intentionally technology-neutral: sessions on liquid fuels, gaseous fuels, electricity, and hydrogen; warehouse operations and corridor planning; and hands-on demonstrations so fleet decision-makers can see the equipment, meet the manufacturers, and talk to the utilities and fuel providers who will supply it.
On the electrification track specifically, we are planning sessions on MCS and corridor charging, depot design and utility coordination under CRGA, V2X and integrated energy management, and the Illinois EV supply chain, connecting Illinois fleets directly to the Illinois companies building what they are buying.
A genuine thank-you to Tim Milburn and Green Ways 2Go for this month’s Board Insights. Tim has been in this space long enough to remember when EV charging was still a novelty, and his framing of EVs as part of an integrated energy ecosystem is exactly the kind of practitioner perspective the summit is built around.
If you are a fleet operator wrestling with a fuel decision, an OEM or supplier in the Illinois clean transportation ecosystem, a utility working on interconnection and tariff design, an EDC or municipality planning corridor infrastructure, or a prospective sponsor who believes Illinois deserves a serious, honest multi-fuel conversation, please reach out. Sponsorship conversations, agenda input, and host-fleet nominations are all open now.
Megawatt charging is one tool in a much larger Illinois toolbox. What Illinois is building is the vehicles and the components that plug into those chargers, and, through CRGA and NEVI, the grid and corridor infrastructure that will power them. That is a real and durable stake in the outcome. IACT’s job, and our members’ shared work, is making sure every Illinois fleet finds the right tool for its mission, and that Illinois communities share in the economic value of whichever tool they choose.
See you on the road,
Ann Schneider
Board Chair, Illinois Alliance for Clean Transportation
Dr. Ann Schneider became IACT’s chair in 2026, bringing 36 years of professional experience in public finance, public policy, and solutions development and 18 years of executive-level transportation policy experience to the role. Now a transportation policy consultant, Dr. Schneider has helped clients secure nearly $357 million in grant funding.