The Glencoe house
Nate Kipnis isn’t the sort of architect who builds eco-friendly houses for the sake of bragging about the latest green bells and whistles he’s added.
In fact, he makes a bigger deal about employing ancient energy-efficient design techniques, such as slanting roofs and overhangs and positioning windows to maximize a home’s access to the sun’s passive energy. Mr. Kipnis, 50, principal of Kipnis Architecture & Planning in Evanston, sometimes persuades clients not to adopt some systems, such as geothermal. He argues they’re not always worth the upfront investment.
Nate Kipnis
So at first blush, it may have surprised some to learn he was getting accolades late last month for designing only the second new home in Illinois that was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Platinum certification, the highest level possible. (The first one is on Chicago’s North Side.) But the home, on a corner lot in Glencoe, received that designation because of the extensive green features adopted, both tried and true, as well as newer technologies. They included a green roof, natural daylight, radiant floor heating, LED recessed lighting, a compact plumbing core design and passive whole-house ventilation. (LEED is short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.)
Mr. Kipnis is involved in many green initiatives in Evanston beyond his primary craft of designing and building eco-friendly homes.
He’s one of the founders of Citizens’ Greener Evanston (which was originally the Network for Evanston’s Future), and he came up with the idea for the Evanston Offshore Wind Farm in 2007. The 200-megawatt project calls for 40 turbines that would be located seven to nine miles east of Northwestern University on Lake Michigan. The initiative is popular among many Evanston residents who want to be less reliant on fossil fuels, but it has its opponents, too.
Regardless of local opinions, progress is stalled in part because of developments in Washington. The federal Production Tax Credit for wind, which would have been instrumental in helping finance the offshore endeavor, is set to expire at yearend, and efforts to extend it face an uncertain future in Congress.
In the wake of his Glencoe project’s LEED recognition, Crain’s met with Mr. Kipnis to learn more about the home and other green efforts he’s pursuing.
Crain’s: You’ve been building green homes for a long time. Was it important for you to finally design one that was awarded LEED Platinum certification?
Mr. Kipnis: I studied architecture with an environmental concentration in the 1980’s, so I’ve been hardwired forever to design green homes. I don’t typically design the super-expensive homes, and it takes money to do a LEED home; extra dollars have to be spent on certification and other things.
Inside the Glencoe house
In this case, the client was pushing for it. He had seen the Al Gore movie (“An Inconvenient Truth”), and it blew his mind. He came to me and said he wanted to do a LEED home. He didn’t want to just say he had a green home. We built him a house that was priced at the Glencoe market rate, but we didn’t give him a crazy home theater or over-the-top cabinets, even though he got a really nice kitchen.
You don’t really know it’s a green house until you start to learn about it. The more you learn, the better the story gets. We’ve had about 1,000 people go through the home during several open houses we’ve been asked to have (by the U.S. Green Building Council to promote more green homes and LEED certification).
Crain’s: Why have there been so few LEED constructions for new homes in Illinois?
Mr. Kipnis: That’s a great question. I’m not sure about this. The USGBC publishes lists of how many homes have been LEED-certified at different levels in various states.
States such as California, Texas, Hawaii, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Washington and Colorado have a tremendous amount of LEED homes, and have most of the Platinum level ones. It might be that Chicago is a “mature” city and as such there are fewer new homes built here than out West. I’m not sure about that, but it might be true.
Crain’s: I know you’re keen on getting the offshore wind farm approved. How much energy can it potentially generate for Evanston residents and businesses?
Mr. Kipnis: The power production depends to a very large degree on the actual wind speed out at the turbine locations. We feel that it is very likely that the wind speed will be on average around 17-18 mph, and possibly more. Wind power goes to the cube of wind speed, so a little increase in wind speed is a very large increase in power.
At 18 mph, the 40 turbines would produce about 15.8 gigawatts of power, which would offset about 59,000 homes. Evanston, for reference, has about 30,000 homes. The CO2 reduction would be equal to about 490,000 tons of CO2. This is 350 percent of the Evanston Climate Action Plan target. The numbers at 20 mph wind are way higher.
Crain’s: Are you hopeful the offshore wind farm will eventually get built near Evanston?
Mr. Kipnis: Yes, but it will probably be built many years down the line. In the meantime, two members of the CGE’s renewable-energy task force met with (Illinois) Rep. Robyn Gabel and then (Illinois) Sen. Jeff Schoenberg. They crafted bills that would establish a board made up of representatives from various interest groups to lay out how an offshore wind farm would be permitted and the steps that would be involved.
The bills went through and the governor signed it, which established the Illinois State Lake Michigan Offshore Wind Energy Advisory Board. The board is currently moving towards finishing their work, probably in the next month or so.
It would be great if we could make our own energy and create our own jobs here to support the project. If that federal tax credit is cut, it will kill so many jobs, and all because of the politics of climate change. We can’t keep using limited fossil fuels. We continue to use it at our own peril.
Crain’s: What other environmental efforts are you and CGE working on?
Mr. Kipnis: Our group is working on a community aggregation initiative to lower electricity rates in Evanston. Power is deregulated in Illinois so you can use any provider you want. When you get a community together, you can negotiate the best rates, and you can choose the source of your power. About 22 communities in Illinois have already done this. Oak Park went 100 percent green power and residents there have been saving close to 25 percent on energy costs.
The Evanston initiative is on the March 20 ballot. If it passes, it will authorize the city to move forward with negotiations and we could have it up and running by the summer. We’d love to have 100 percent green power, but no matter what, this will help Evanston lower its carbon dioxide footprint. We won’t know the actual dollar savings until we go and lock in rates in the market.
We’re getting a website up now to make sure everyone is educated. Our goal is to get the highest percentage of people in Evanston to be in favor of this community aggregation initiative — please tell me who would prefer more expensive, dirty power? If we can have a mandate here, it puts some emphasis behind other things we want to work on and it will give us great momentum.
