The city of Aurora is working toward adopting stricter energy codes for all buildings within city limits, which officials say could help lower energy costs for residents and meet previously-established sustainability goals.
Efforts to locally adopt the Illinois Stretch Energy Code could be supported by a $200,000 state grant that the Aurora City Council will consider accepting at its meeting next week. City Director of Sustainability Alison Lindburg, who is set to lead the project, told aldermen at a committee meeting Tuesday that staff plans to work toward adopting these codes even if City Council choses not to accept the grant.
Any code changes eventually proposed by city staff would first need to be approved by the Aurora City Council before they could go into effect.
The state has a “base” energy code, but cities are allowed to take those energy-efficiency requirements a step further by adopting state “stretch” codes, which then become the standard locally, according to Lindburg’s presentation to the City Council’s Committee of the Whole. She said stretch codes give cities a way to reduce energy costs for residents and businesses plus meet climate and energy goals.
Requirements in stretch codes sometimes make their way into future base codes, Lindburg said, so this is a way to get market acceptance for practices currently “on the forefront.”
“There’s nothing in the stretch code that is weird or out of the ordinary,” she told aldermen on Tuesday. “These are all practices that current builders could do with a little bit of education.”
The “2023” version of the Illinois Stretch Energy Code, which went into effect at the start of this year, already applies to all state-funded facilities, according to the state’s webpage on the stretch code. Privately-funded commercial and residential buildings must follow the stretch code only where it has been adopted by a city or village government.
The stretch code has different standards for commercial and residential, according to Lindburg. She said both have mandatory requirements all buildings would need to follow — things like solar readiness and electric vehicle readiness, among others — but then they each also have various “compliance paths” that a designer or developer would need to pick between.
That’s similar to how the base code already works, she said, the difference is just that there are stronger energy-efficiency elements under the stretch code.
Aurora Chief Development Services Officer John Curley told aldermen at the meeting Tuesday that the city is already in the process of updating its building codes.
Plus, the state is working towards adopting its next base energy code, Curley said, which is expected to go beyond the current base and be closer to what is in the stretch code. So, if adopted, the stretch code would basically put Aurora three years ahead of the base energy code, he said.
In part, the $200,000 state grant would be put towards figuring out the potential impact of stretch code adoption through public input and then finding ways to ease those impacts, according to Lindburg. She said that could look like training or technical assistance but may also include financial assistance or incentives and the streamlining of the permitting process.
Aurora will also be putting together a technical advisory committee for the adoption of the stretch code, Lindburg said. The committee would likely meet for three to four months, and there would also be other opportunities for public comment, she said.
If the stretch code is eventually adopted by the Aurora City Council, Lindburg said she would be recommending there be at least a six-month ramp-up period before it begins to be implemented and enforced.
Lindburg gave a similar presentation last week to the City Council’s Finance Committee, which unanimously recommended the $200,000 state grant for approval. The Committee of the Whole this week placed the approval of the grant on the consent agenda of the City Council meeting on Tuesday, meaning it is likely to pass.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
