Illinois' push to train workers for solar industry jobs is paying off
Published on September 12, 2025
At 15, Kyle Barber started working at the Captain coal mine in southern Illinois — “following in the footsteps of my forefathers,” he says. It was 1996, and the mine was closing, so his job involved swinging sledgehammers and scrambling down dangerously steep hillsides to retrieve huge rolls of discarded chain-link…