City Council moves Healthy Buildings Ordinance forward to final vote

Evanston City Council members moved closer Monday toward adopting the city’s first Healthy Buildings Ordinance (HBO), which would require 500 of the city’s largest buildings to be energy-efficient, free of on-site emissions and powered entirely by renewable energy sources by 2050.

Council members voted 8-0 in favor of introducing the ordinance, which is to return to the council for final review and action at its Jan. 27 meeting.

Natural gas used by buildings is currently the leading cause of greenhouse emissions in Evanston, accounting for 41% of community-wide emissions. Local environmentalists have long sought a big ticket item such as requiring buildings to go all-electric as part of the Climate Action and Resilience Plan adopted by the city in 2018, which seeks to achieve zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

By moving forward on the proposal, the “city is walking the walk,” dating back to the city’s continuous commitment to climate action over the last couple of decades, maintained Fourth Ward Council Member Jonathan Nieuwsma, long an active environmental justice advocate.

“So now, we are doing not just what this council said it would do,” he said during discussion on Monday, “we are doing what previous councils have committed us to do.”

The city had been setting the stage to take this action for quite a while. In 2016, the council passed the Energy and Water Benchmarking Ordinance, which requires buildings over 20,000 square feet to annually report their energy and water usage, Cara Pratt, the city’s sustainability and resilience coordinator, told council members in a presentation at the meeting and in a written memo.

The city’s Building Electrification Working Group — which includes representatives from the Environment Board and Utilities Commission, as well as community members with an expertise in energy, building science, policy design and other areas, “has been the key public body” responsible for developing the ordinance, she said.

A $10.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy has been approved and “is waiting to be signed,” Pratt said in her memo, which would go toward the city meeting the key energy goal.

The ordinance language has been modeled along the lines of the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) model, she said, which in itself draws on a number of communities’ experiences creating building performance standards across the U.S.

The new law would require buildings over 20,000 square feet to meet three performance metrics by 2051, she said.

• Buildings must be energy efficient or reduce their energy output;
• Buildings must eliminate on-site and district system emissions; 
• Buildings must solely procure renewable energy, such as solar or through a third party procurement contract as the city is doing with its own buildings.

Two public bodies will be created under the ordinance and empowered to establish interim performance metrics and a rule making process for alternative compliance.

The performance metrics will be strengthened every five years, beginning in 2030 and running until 2050.

“So if you’re hearing about this for the first time this evening,” Pratt said, “and it affects the building you manage, the earliest you have to reach any performance metrics is 2030. That’s five years from now.”

Northwestern feels ‘targeted’ under current version

Members of some groups — building owners and natural gas providers, for example — are raising concerns right now, especially the city’s largest building owner, Northwestern University.

While university officials said they share the city’s commitment to reducing greenhouse emissions and transitioning to a more sustainable future, they are concerned the university is being “singularly targeted by the HBO,” Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Luke Figora, Vice President and General Counsel Stephanie M. Graham and Senior Executive Director of Neighborhood and Community Relations Dave Davis said in a Jan. 13 letter to the city.

“For instance, Northwestern is the only entity that operates a district utility plant at scale, servicing more than 180 buildings on campus,” Figora and Graham noted. “The order of magnitude and technical complexity of operating a district energy system is drastically different from individual property ownership. As currently written, the HBO places a disproportionate share of the compliance costs on our University in a way that we do not believe was the intent of the City Council when considering an equitable path toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

They further pointed out that “in the last two years, the University has developed a proposed infrastructure master plan that would guide a holistic conversion of the utility system underpinning the campus — from the central utility plant to each individual connected building, and every underground connection point in-between. This plan reviewed all known potential technological solutions, eyeing a pathway to confidently approach the challenge today while remaining adaptable to future technologies that may emerge at some point in the future.

“The scale of this investment would be massive — likely approaching $1 billion in capital costs and taking 20 to 30 years to complete. The models indicate this investment would lead to a significant reduction in onsite emissions, in the range of 70-80%, and  create a more sustainable, resilient campus. Even this proposed plan and investment appears to fall short of the arbitrary conditions placed on Northwestern by the proposed HBO,” the letter stated, calling for continued dialogue on the issue to achieve “a mutually agreeable solution that fulfills our shared commitment to environmental stewardship.”

Extensive outreach

City officials, meanwhile, have emphasized the outreach that went into the process, including a staff meeting with NU administrators in October and November 2023 to discuss the city’s building electrification policy. In addition, staff has collaborated extensively over the past several months with the NU Trienens Institute and McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, winning their letter of support for the $10.4 million grant, officials maintained.

During the extensive public comment portion of the meeting, support was strongly in favor of the city moving forward on the ordinance.

Among the speakers:

• Paula Scholl, an Environment Board member and chair of the Building Electrification Working Group, noted the $10.4 million Department of Energy grant in support of the process, “and it needs to be passed without delay in its current form to ensure that we receive the grant funds,” she told council members. The funds will be used to hire staff, help buildings navigate financing sources and establish an equity basis for applying the ordinance to the city’s 500 biggest buildings, she said.
• Jessica Miller, an Evanston resident and the senior policy director for the Institute for Market Transformation, which partnered with the Biden administration to advance similar policies nationwide, noted that “Evanston is not alone in taking this critical step,” and that such policies are part of a growing movement. “Forty-eight cities and states have publicly committed to passing this type of policy, and I’m proud that Evanston was one of the first,” Miller said. “We know these policies work. In New York City, more than 90% of buildings are meeting their targets ahead of the first compliance deadline.”
• Kevin Gadzala, regional manager for Nicor Gas, the state’s largest natural gas provider, was one of a smaller number of speakers calling on council members to reconsider the change. “Nicor gas delivers clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy to 2.3 million families and businesses in more than 650 communities throughout the state, including the more than 500 buildings in Evanston that would be significantly impacted by the proposed Healthy Buildings ordinance,” he said. “Our modern and efficient system delivers the energy our customers need and deserve, especially on the coldest days of the year. In fact, the Northern Illinois gas distribution system delivers four and a half times more energy than the regional electric grid at approximately half the cost of electricity.”

Gadzala told council members that approximately 10,000 Evanston residents have benefited from Nicor’s energy efficiency programs to date:

“We’re here today advocating for these customers who will be significantly impacted by the city’s proposed ordinance,” Gadzala said. “Nicor Gas looks forward to engaging in the ordinance development process and leveraging our 160 years of experience to identify more sensible solutions that can help the City of Evanston achieve its decarbonization goals while ensuring our customers continue to have access to the energy they deserve.”

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