Save the date!

September 25, 2025

5:30pm - 8:00pm CT
mHUB Chicago

Illinois Green's annual Limelight Celebration & Emerald Awards Ceremony, recognizing the region’s top achievements in sustainability, will be held on September 25, 2025 at mHUB, Chicago's tech innovation center.

Limelight will immediately follow this year's Getting to Zero Tech Forum and will bring together a diverse network of industry leaders working in the sustainability field. Join us as we honor and recognize the latest achievements in green building innovation, design, and technology.


Emerald Awards Ceremony
Illinois Green's Emerald Awards, launched in 2008, recognizes outstanding individual or organizational achievement helping to put Illinois on a path to 100% net zero buildings by 2050. Each year, awardees are determined by the Illinois Green Alliance governing board and honor the industry influencers, advocates, and thought leadership advancing net zero design, technology, and policy.

This year, the Emerald Award Ceremony will also be an opportunity to share an update to Illinois Green Alliance’s Net Zero Honor Roll and Watch List, an initiative to raise awareness of the buildings achieving the highest level of green building certifications around net zero energy, carbon, water, and waste.

2024 Individual Achievement Award

Chris Dillion, President of Campbell Coyle and President & CEO of Vermilion Campbell, was 2024's Path to Zero Hero honoree for Individual Leadership. Chris has built a well-deserved reputation as the go-to expert for other real estate developers on how to finance high-performance building projects and build the teams necessary to deliver on ambitious sustainability projects. He’s a true collaborator, convening nonprofits, city makers, community builders, and the private sector for catalyzing meaningful change. Mr. Dillion’s most recent project, the 124,000-square-foot Campus Instructional Facility at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, became the first LEED Zero certified project in Illinois.   

2024 Organizational Achievement Award
Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH),   honored as the recipient of the 2024 Organizational Emerald Award, is a national nonprofit developer, owner, and operator of affordable rental apartments with a commitment and track record of demonstrating the value and benefit in prioritizing carbon reduction strategies and technologies in affordable housing projects. Since 2008, POAH has built and renovated more than 3,000 mixed-income housing units in the Chicago area as they deliver on their mission to preserve and steward sustainable affordable rental housing for low-to-moderate income individuals and families.

Nominate an Awardee

If you'd like to suggest a potential awardee our Board of Directors should consider, fill out the contact form. Awardee suggestions can be made at any time of the year. Awardees are selected by August 15 and recognized at our Emerald Awards Ceremony in September.

Have a recommendation for consideration?

Submit the green building leader, company, or organization here:

Contact Us

Sponsor Limelight

Earn recognition at this signature event and help get Illinois closer to net zero by 2050. Learn more about the event sponsorship levels and benefits. Contact Sondra Morin, Development Manager, at smorin@illinoisgreenalliance.org to start the conversation!

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2023 Emerald Award Recipient

Sarah Elizabeth Ippel

Illinois Green’s 2023 Emerald Award for Individual Achievement is Sarah Elizabeth Ippel, Founder and Executive Director of the Academy for Global Citizenship, and CEO of Cultivate Collective.


Her uncompromising 20-year commitment to sustainable communities is reflected as a leader in the education and community revitalization fields. While the recently completed Cultivate Collective hub that houses the Academy for Global Citizenship on Chicago’s Southwest side, championed by Ippel, serves as a first-of-its kind net zero project, it is just the most recent example of her long-standing commitment to reflect the environmental values of the school in the physical design of the building. Throughout her career she has leveraged her experience from one project to the next, each time raising the bar for what can be accomplished.

“I am inspired by the way she brings the sustainability components of the buildings as an opportunity to influence the educational curriculum, improve the health and wellness of the community and engage the community in the process,” said John Mlade, Illinois Green Alliance’s Board Chair.

For her work, Ippel was named one of Monocle’s Top 20 International Pioneers in Education and visited the White House to receive a national award from the Obama administration in 2011. Forbes named her one of the nation's “top five game changers in education” and was the recipient of the GOOD 100 list of “people pushing the world forward through doing.” In June 2022, Crain's Chicago Business recognized Ippel as one of their “notable leaders in sustainability.”

See past Emerald Award Winners: 2022 | 2021