Naperville hears how preservation saves energy

By Joe McElroy

“The greenest building is the one that already exists.”—Carl Elefante, FAIA, 2007.

Many people cherish living or working in older buildings made with quality materials like brick and plaster. But every year thousands of old buildings are replaced with new construction.

As the above quote makes clear, there is a better way. That was the message from Naperville’s Bill Simon, who is active in both NEST (Naperville Environment & Sustainability Task force) and Naperville Preservation Inc., where he is a member of the Board of Directors along with: Becky Simon, president; Jane Burke, vice president; Ted Slupik, treasurer; and Tom Ryan, chief preservation officer. Other board members are: Joe McElroy, Ron Keller, and Philip Buchanan, all Naperville residents.

Speaking at a recent online NEST meeting, Simon agreed that Elefante’s statement seems strange at first. “At first you might think, ‘What? How can that be? What about those leaky windows, that lack of insulation and those old heating and cooling systems?’ that cause problems in older buildings, Simon told the Naperville group.

However, as architect Elefante put it, “Retrofitting existing buildings to meet high performance standards is the most effect strategy for reducing near-and mid-term carbon emissions, the most important step in limiting climate disruption.”

Two concepts—embodied carbon and adaptive reuse--are key to understanding how historic preservation and energy conservation complement each other. Embodied carbon refers to emissions arising from the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, renovation and disposal of building materials. “When we build buildings, a lot of the materials that we use release carbon dioxide,” according to Simon, a chemical engineer.

Simon quotes Bill Gates, who wrote, “Making one ton of steel produces about 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide.” According to the International Energy Agency, 40 percent of the world’s carbon comes from buildings, either operations or new construction.

The other concept, adaptive reuse, can also be called “repurposing,” as in finding new uses for existing buildings. For example, many old YMCA buildings across the country have been renovated into affordable housing.

Naperville examples include Old Nichols Library, now an Italian restaurant, and the former main post office at the corner of Washington and Van Buren, where a smaller postal facility now shares space with Naperville Bank & Trust.

On east Jefferson Street is the Truitt House, designed by architect Harry Robinson, who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. Built for Naperville’s first doctor, the prairie style building is now an office building for North Central College.

Simon also cited the example of an airplane hanger that has been repurposed today as the Los Angeles office for Google.

It’s possible to quantify the carbon-related benefits of adaptive reuse, as shown at the Boston University Hillel Center, which was built in the 1950s as an addition to an adjacent, 19th century building. As is typically the case, the embodied carbon, the upfront carbon emissions generated by construction, is very high.

Using the building’s 2016 renovation as a test case, architects quantified how much less carbon was generated by renovation instead of new construction. Through a tool called Carbon Avoider Retrofit Estimator, the analysis showed that retrofitting the building instead of replacing it reduced embodied carbon by more than 50 percent and also lowered operating carbon.

Over 15 years, the new building would have put out more total operating and embodied carbon than the renovated building.

In Naperville, approximately 75 percent of carbon emissions come from buildings, according to NEST’s Naperville 2036 report, which recommends adaptive reuse as an alternative to new construction. However, that recommendation is not part of the City’s work plan.

The East Highlands neighborhood is one place this is playing out. According to a survey commissioned by Naperville Preservation Inc., more than half of the original homes, built in the 1950s and early 1960s, have been demolished and replaced.

“Renovations and adaptive reuse help reduce our carbon footprint going forward,” Simon said. “There are new tools that can help policymakers and private parties make development decisions.”

A video of the presentation can be viewed on NEST’s YouTube channel. For more information about Naperville historic preservation, visit www.napervillepreservation.org.

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(Editors: For more information contact Joe McElroy, joe9204@gmail.com, 630-803-4375, or Bill Simon, bill@napervillepreservation.org, 630-803-7778).