Electric heating in vintage Chicago homes, including bungalows and two-flats, could greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, study finds
Built in 1922, Katanya Raby’s South Side home has a classic look: dark brick, white trim and cheeky little attic windows peering out from the roof.
But this is not your parents’ Chicago bungalow.
In 2021, Raby enrolled in a study that aims to show that Chicago’s vintage homes can slash their greenhouse gas emissions — and lower their utility bills — by weatherproofing and switching to high-efficiency electric appliances.
In Raby’s case, that meant adding insulation and electric heating and cooling, as well as an electric stove, water heater and dryer.
“This is really cool,” said Raby, an urban planner who chuckles when she says she lives in an old building with “Space Age” appliances. “This was an opportunity for me to show my children how they can play a part in reducing their carbon footprint.”
Classic Chicago homes such as the sturdy brick fortresses we call bungalows already define large swaths of the city. Now, researchers hope, these signature buildings — many built before 1942 — can help us forge a more climate-friendly future.
Researchers at the Chicago clean energy nonprofit Elevate and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are focusing on the surprisingly high portion of Chicago’s greenhouse gas emissions — about 14% — that come from the city’s smaller residential buildings.
Chicago homes are older, leakier and use more energy than the national average, but, in a way, that’s good news: Precisely because there’s so much room for improvement, these homes hold great potential for energy savings.
As part of a four-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the researchers identified common types of vintage homes — including hometown favorites such as the brawny bungalow, the practical midcentury ranch and the gracious two-flat — that together account for a whopping 320,000 buildings across the city.
The study’s computer modeling shows that energy efficiency upgrades including insulation and electrification — or increasing a building’s reliance on electricity — would allow these homes to decrease energy use by more than 50% while reducing average utility costs.
To put that in perspective: If all 320,000 older buildings cut their energy use by the predicted amount, Chicago would reduce its planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year — the equivalent of taking 500,000 cars off the road.
The researchers are testing their energy-savings predictions against real-world conditions at 10 Chicago homes, including Raby’s.
Energy use at the homes is being tracked for a year, so it can be compared to previous usage, with results expected next year.
“This is going to play a huge role in helping us figure out what are the crucial components of an electrification project in Chicago,” said Chicago Recovery Plan Director Lindy Wordlaw. “I think there are some great learnings that will help inform program planning and policy efforts for years to come.”
A ‘really happy’ homeowner
The snow. The wind. The 3-foot icicles hanging off gutters.
Chicago winters can be harsh, and Raby’s greatest fear as she contemplated going all-electric at home was that a high-efficiency heat pump, which delivers warm air in winter and cool air in summer, simply wouldn’t be up to the challenge.
“I was wrong,” she said.
The heat pump, which comes with supplemental electric heating that turns on automatically on the very coldest days, kept her family warm last winter, she said. In fact, she and her two children were more comfortable than before.
“It used to get chilly in some parts of the house, just because of the improper insulation, and now we’re cozy,” Raby said.
In another big win for Raby, the added attic insulation contained more heat, and the big icicles that used to hang from her gutters never materialized.
Raby’s one concern is her utility costs, which seem to have risen after the upgrades, she said, although she hasn’t yet done a precise month-to-month comparison. The researchers’ computer modeling found that participants should be saving up to $1,500 a year, depending on their home type and degree of upgrade. Bungalow residents are supposed to save $200 to $1,300.
Raby, who wants to be able to recommend the upgrades to neighbors with less income, intends to contact Elevate to ask if there are any tweaks that might bring down her energy bills.
“We’re all still trying to figure it out,” she said.
Cutting costs is critical to the project, which aims to increase access to cleaner energy in neighborhoods that have lower average incomes, higher health burdens and histories of discrimination and disinvestment. That focus on equity is a priority for the city of Chicago, which, along with ComEd, is collaborating on the research project.
The energy efficiency upgrades in the 10-home demonstration project, which cost $50,000 to $60,000 per home, were provided for free.
When Raby first heard about the study from a colleague at work, she was interested. Climate change is a concern for her, and she wanted to lower her utility bills.
The work on her home began with an assessment of potential energy savings and a blower test, in which a big fan is used to determine whether windows and doors are leaking.
Raby pulled up photos and videos on her phone to show what happened next: “I think I made an album of the construction because I was just so impressed.”
Workers covered the interior of her home in plastic sheets: walls, floors and furniture. Then they drilled holes in the walls, pumped in insulation, and patched all the openings.
“Everything got really efficient after that,” Raby said. “The house was able to hold the proper temperature.”
Other changes included plumbing and electrical upgrades, which were mostly done in the basement but involved some loud drilling, and appliance swap outs, including the installation of a sleek new induction stove.
“My inconvenience was small in comparison to all of the amazing work that they did,” Raby said. “I’m really happy with it.”
Reaching climate goals
As concern about climate change grows, there are many disagreements about how best to achieve national and international goals of net zero emissions by 2050 and prevent the worst effects of global warming.
But most experts do agree that replacing fossil fuels with electricity — in both cars and buildings — is a must, and can be done with existing technology. Moving to electricity can reduce short-term greenhouse gas emissions, and it prepares the U.S. to take full advantage of the rise of solar and wind energy, which is expected to produce very clean electricity in the future.
There’s a national push to electrify buildings, or replace fossil fuels with electricity, with New York banning natural gas heating and stoves in new buildings, and Los Angeles passing a ban on most gas appliances in new construction.
Chicago has set a goal of adding substantial electrification to 20% of the city’s one- to four-unit homes by 2030, and to 50% by 2040.
But how, exactly, will the city make that transition? One of the goals of the current study is to help build a road map.
Researchers in the Chicago study identified five types of classic city vintage homes that — taken together — account for about 320,000 single-family or small multiunit residences in Chicago.
The buildings include defining architecture from the pre-1942 era: single-family brick, stone or concrete homes such as bungalows, single-family frame-construction homes such as Victorian workers’ cottages, brick, stone or concrete two- to four-unit homes such as two-flats, and frame construction two- to four-unit homes.
The fifth building type to make the list is the single-family home constructed between 1942 and 1972 from brick, stone or concrete, a category that includes ranch homes.
Such buildings are important if we want to meet ambitious local and national climate goals, according to Elevate principal director for research and innovation Rachel Scheu.
“We can’t do this by focusing on new construction alone,” Scheu said. “We have to address existing housing stock.”
To predict potential energy savings, the researchers did advanced computer modeling of about a dozen potential upgrade approaches, settling on two that included high-efficiency heat pump heating and weatherization measures such as insulation.
Scheu said the upgrades have additional non-energy impacts, among them increasing the availability of air conditioning. Only 30% of Chicago single-family homes have central air, and since high-efficiency electric heat pumps provide both heating and cooling, they can help fill the gap.
Insulation, similarly, provides a health and comfort benefit by allowing buildings to retain more heat and cooling during power outages.
There’s even a chance to improve indoor air quality, according to Wordlaw, who said the city looks forward to analyzing the demonstration project’s before-and-after data.
“What are the take-aways?” Wordlaw said. “What can we learn from this? That will be really good information as we start to think more broadly about how we build programming and offerings.”
