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Chicago could soon be the first major Midwestern city with an indoor emissions standard that would make gas-powered appliances and heating systems a thing of the past.
The Clean and Affordable Buildings Ordinance, introduced last week by Mayor Brandon Johnson during the first city council meeting of the year, will effectively phase out fossil fuel-based appliances and heating systems in new construction and significantly improved buildings. The new rule will take effect within a year of approval.
“This is an opportunity to not only address climate, but we can build an entire economy around it,” Johnson said.
Not everyone is convinced.
Earlier this month, two aldermen successfully sidelined Chicago’s electrification ordinance by referring it to the rules committee, a tactic often used to stymie ordinances with procedural delays. Once referred out of the rules committee, the ordinance will have to go through the zoning and zoning committees before going to the city council for a full vote.
Some of the state’s most influential gas and construction unions openly oppose adoption of the indoor emissions standard. Together, they call for further trials and studies on the costs of implementing the proposed rule.
“Homeowners shouldn’t choose affordability over going green,” said Kristine Kavanagh, who is with International Union of Engineers Local 150. “They need to have options for both clean and affordable energy.”
As the mayor and his allies see it, the push to build electrification in Chicago is part of a broader project not only to wean the city off fossil fuels, but also to address the cumulative health impacts of indoor air pollution and burdensome utility bills speak. The effort was an important recommendation from the city Build Decarbonisation Policy Working Group back in 2022. The report determined that buildings are Chicago’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions — nearly 70 percent.
“The Clean Affordable Buildings Act is the first step in a managed, planned process to move away from dirty, expensive gas and embrace a cheaper, cleaner energy future for all Chicagoans,” said Legislator Maria Hadden, representing the 49th ward in the south. side of the city.
Cities across the country are looking to build electrification as a way to reduce planet-warming emissions. Since the first-of-its-kind electrification ordinance was introduced in 2019 in Berkeley, California, 100 local governments across the country have adopted similar policies. Major metropolitan cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle have all gotten on board to rework building codes to prioritize electrification for new construction. Chicago could soon be next.
But the surge in local electrification policies has faced considerable opposition. Berkeley’s Electrification Ordinance was overturned by a federal appeals panel last year. More than 20 states have effectively passed legislation prohibiting municipalities to ban natural gas connections.
In a statement to Grist, Peoples Gas, the major gas utility that serves the Chicago area, said, “This proposed ordinance will increase costs and reliability for everyone, especially during the coldest days of the year like Chicago has seen.”
But Chicago’s utility bills are already unmanageable. This past November, the Illinois Commerce Commission a $302 million rate hike rate hike for Peoples Gas that is expected to make Chicago gas customers’ utility bills more expensive than they already are — about one in five Chicagoans are more than 30 days behind on their gas bills.
“We don’t want to just trade one energy source for another,” said Angela Tovar, the city’s chief sustainability officer. She called the proposed policy “fuel neutral,” a key point for Tovar and others who helped draft the ordinance. They want to avoid the legal challenges that plagued the original iteration of electrification efforts, many of which were largely outright bans on gas connections. A handful of them already were withdrawn.
Following New York CityInstead, Chicago’s solution is aimed at indoor air pollution by limiting the burning of any substance that emits 25 kilograms or more of carbon dioxide per million British thermal units of energy. In the process, the new standard will make natural gas-powered appliances obsolete and encourage the adoption of electric stoves and heating systems. However, the ordinance carves out a list of exemptions, including emergency generators, health care facilities and commercial kitchens.
Illinois has set a goal to phase out fossil fuels by 2050. Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago with a population of just over 50,000, took the lead last summer, passing the first electrification standards of any local government in the Midwest. Oak Park architect Tom Bassett-Dilley said enthusiasm for fossil fuel-free living is already evident.
“We no longer do any buildings that have gas lines in them for the last three or four years,” Bassett-Dilley said. “There are a lot of people out there looking for it, the demand has definitely skyrocketed.”
Allies of Chicago’s new emissions standard call it a reasonable first step toward meeting the state’s climate goals and mitigating the worst impacts of climate change.
“Equitable decarbonization is a core principle that guides us in introducing this policy, as well as future actions as a city,” Tovar said. “We need to design better outcomes that work for every building type and every neighborhood across Chicago, we need to ensure that the benefits of the transition to clean energy sources are accessible to everyone, regardless of your zip code.”
