01/20/2025
Decarbonization for Planners
Over just the last couple of years, climate change has emerged as a focus in mainstream planning practice. Climate-focused goals, objectives, and recommendations routinely appear in comprehensive, climate, walkability, and transportation plans. While the AICP Code of Ethics is silent on climate, its two urgings to “have special concern for the long-range consequences of past and present decisions” and use “principles of sustainability and resilience as guiding influences” would seem to point toward recommending climate action.
Climate Adaptation: reacting to the impacts of global warming by developing resilience or by relocating, elevating, or hardening development.
The devastating January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires provide graphic evidence for a growing public consensus that the climate is changing and that we need to react, if only to protect ourselves. Immediate threats to our safety like wildfires and floods, trigger our reptile brains to “fight or flight”, a fundamental evolutionary reflex that kept our ancient ancestors alive. This consensus to take climate action is strongest in support of climate adaptation: reacting to the impacts of global warming by developing resilience or by relocating, elevating, or hardening development.
It is also increasingly easy to get communities to prioritize resiliency—the ability to bounce back—from future climate events. This consensus to “act on climate” can be sustained, even in conservative communities, as long as the human causes of climate change are not discussed.
January 2025 produced a second climate news story, a real blockbuster. For 2024, Earth’s average temperature edged just above the 1.50C target established in 2016’s Paris Climate Accords. This news was catastrophic, abstract, and (frankly) wonky and, not surprisingly, got nothing like the attention of the wildfires. To those in the know, exceeding the 1.50C target in 2025 meant that humans need to dramatically speed up the transition away from fossil fuels, AKA decarbonization, knowing that the LA wildfires are on the tame end of the disasters that global warming could bring. Again, our reptile brains are ill-equipped to prioritize immediate action in response to such a remote, abstract, and disputed threat as global warming. The suitability of Earth to support human life is endangered, but we can’t be bothered to exert effort to prevent it.
What is a thoughtful planner to do?
Climate change touches all scales and aspects of planning and a maddeningly-wide range of defensible responses. Planners who work closely with municipalities know it can be hard to gain traction on addressing global concerns that don’t also provide obvious local benefits. Any climate-related initiative that saves money, even if the investment takes a few years to recoup such as LED streetlights, is fair game. Planners who propose climate-related Initiatives that cost money and/or do not produce compelling local benefits face, of course, a harder sell. Decarbonization can be that harder sell.
Decarbonization: A Pound of Prevention
Decarbonization: 1. The process of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through energy efficiency, replacing gas-burning equipment with electric equipment, and by generating power from non-polluting energy sources. 2. A core strategy of climate mitigation.
Decarbonization is the process of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through energy efficiency, replacing gas-burning equipment with electric equipment, and generating power from non-polluting energy sources. While many decarbonization strategies do save money, many do not. For example, replacing gas-burning equipment with all-electric equipment can trigger a costly upgrade to the building’s electrical service. Decarbonization can also be complicated. Switching from heating your home with a gas furnace to an electric heat pump can increase the cost of heating, unless you insulate at the same time, adding further cost. But there is a hack that planners can exploit to take a lead on decarbonization.
The Planners Decarb Hack? Make a Plan
The decarbonization hack is a simple two-parter:
- Adopt the mindset that all aspects of decarbonization will occur eventually.
- Accelerate the pace of decarbonization by making a plan to undertake each decarb strategy at its earliest opportune moment.
For some mitigation strategies timing does not matter; installing LED streetlights is a good idea regardless. But many higher-impact decarb strategies have a moment in time when they make the most sense. For example, for a piece of fossil-fuel-burning equipment, the end of its useful life is the most opportune time to swap it for an efficient electric alternative. The opportunity is to determine when that opportune time is and to make a plan to act.
How Can Planners Promote Decarbonization?
The most effective way for planners to promote and accelerate decarbonization is by incorporating a decarb agenda (specific decarb strategies and timelines for their initiation) into three routine project types: comprehensive plans, subdivision and zoning regulations, and development RFPs. Each section ends with a note on opportune timing.
The following planning strategies are strongly supportive of decarbonization and offer other public benefits. While some of these strategies do not appear in comp plans today they could.
CP1: Smart Growth: Walkable Density & Land Conservation
For more than a generation, the Smart Growth Principles have provided the strategic foundation for sustainable land development nationally. This has resulted in many thousands of built smart growth developments (including many in Illinois), marketed as TOD or New Urbanism. There is a deep body of research documenting the environmental performance of built smart growth, often in comparison to auto-dominated sprawl, and the data is clear: Smart growth reduces per capita VMT and GHG pollution by promoting walking, biking, transit use. These compact, mixed-use places also reduce both the number and length of trips, earning the label “transit-efficient”. These data validate this project’s basic premise that smart growth correlates with reduced GHG pollution. Perhaps the best thing about smart growth as a decarbonization tool is that its GHG reduction benefits are permanently locked-in.
Opportune Timing: Ongoing
CP2: Speeding Up Smart Growth
The pace at which Smart Growth gets implemented is out of sync with the stepped-up pace of change called for by the Climate Emergency. The time scale for reducing GHG emissions has been broadly defined in the climate policy arena (The Paris Accords, 2030 Challenge, 80 X 50 Campaigns, etc.) as being between 10 to 25 years. Unfortunately, Smart Growth is conventionally slow to implement, unfolding over decades rather than years. Whether enacted through a complete streets program, a walkable zoning code, or mixed-use developments, the hoped-for GHG reduction benefits of Smart Growth occur slower than is needed.
New tactics, strategies, technologies, and infrastructures have been developed to accelerate change and deliver GHG reductions years faster than conventional Smart Growth including:
- Tactical urbanism (Proven way to speed up code adoption and project implementation)
- New mobility such as shared bikes and scooters (extending the length of car-free trips)
- Electrification (vehicle fleets, new buildings, deep energy retrofits)
Opportune Timing: Public transit planning, municipal fleet upgrades and replacement.
CP3: All-Electric Building Codes
Starting with Berkeley, California, climate-focused cities across the country are adopting new building codes that all but prohibit burning fossil fuels in new construction. In 2024, Oak Park was the first Illinois municipality to adopt such a code, a trend certain to continue as the building industry pivots to adopt all-electric technologies. Comprehensive plans can help create good expectations by mentioning this trend and highlighting the opportunity that arises every three years for Home Rule communities to adopt a more aggressive building energy code.
Opportune Timing: Updated building codes come up for review and adoption every three years.
CP4: Decarbonizing Municipal Building Portfolios
Comprehensive plans often highlight the need to update or build new municipal buildings: city halls, schools, police and fire, etc. A decarbonization-thoughtful comp plan should recommend decarbonizing municipal building portfolios and recommend commissioning a feasibility study to prioritize pathways to achieve decarbonization on a case-by-case basis.
Opportune Timing: The feasibility study can be done anytime. Building decarbonization should take place as part of major renovations and new construction. Gas equipment should be replaced with electric equipment at the end of its useful life. This requires planning.
CP5: Resiliency Hubs
In the age of a changing climate, planning has to address the opportunity to provide resilience in case of a power outage or natural disaster. There are two flavors of resilience: passive and active. Buildings built with passive resilience can still be occupied even when the power goes out, simply because they are designed and built so well. Active resilience often involves equipment such as backup batteries and photovoltaic arrays.
Comprehensive plans can address resiliency by recommending that each new municipal building be built with passive resilience in mind, likely by referencing the PHIUS standard.
Opportune Timing: New construction or major renovation of a suitable municipal building.
CP6: Utility-Scale Strategies: Municipal Aggregation with Additionality
The State of Illinois allows local governments to procure power on behalf of their residents, businesses, and municipal accounts from an alternative supplier while still receiving transmission and distribution services from their existing utility provider. This policy sets the stage for ambitious decarbonization. Ann Arbor Michigan’s groundbreaking A2Zero decarb plan concluded that municipal aggregation (with additionality) accounted for the single largest reduction in CO2.
Additionality requires any renewable generating capacities, supplied as part of a municipal aggregation agreement, to be provided by newly-built facilities rather than simply buying electricity from an existing solar or wind farm.
While municipalities with the appetite to take on utility-scale reforms are likely to be rare, comprehensive plans can support decarbonization by planting a seed about this highest-impact strategy.
While municipalities with the appetite to take on utility-scale reforms are likely to be rare, comprehensive plans can support decarbonization by planting a seed about this highest-impact strategy.
Opportune Timing: Municipalities renew their utility franchise agreements every 5 to 20 years.
Promoting Decarbonization through Zoning
Zoning plays a crucial role in shaping a low-carbon built environment and decarbonizing individual buildings, both new and existing. Below are four suggested zoning tweaks to promote a decarbonized built environment.
Z1: Increased Density
Higher-density, mixed-use development results in lower per capita greenhouse gas emissions than low-density, single-use places. Virtually any up-zoning that allows increased density on a site is a climate win. Second, denser buildings use less energy per square foot than smaller buildings, compounding the benefits of a more compact urban form. Zoning that permits additional development on existing lots (ADU’s for example) contributes to decarbonization.
Z2: Reduced Parking
In recent years, many cities updated their zoning codes to reduce, or altogether eliminate, minimum, off-street parking requirements. This policy eliminates the problem created when developers are forced to build parking spaces they don’t need simply because the zoning requires it. Reduced parking contributes to decarbonization.
Z3: Promoting Thick Walls in New Buildings
In heating-dominated northern climates like Chicago’s, it is important to insulate buildings well, usually by thickening the walls. Thick walls create a disinvestment disincentive for developers to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings because, under the setback rules of zoning codes, thicker walls can reduce the rentable/sellable floor area. Innovative zoning and standards for municipalities that anticipate strong demand for multifamily housing should consider zoning bonuses to avoid discouraging thick walls.
Z4: Eliminating Zoning Barriers to Deep Energy Retrofits
Chicago contains 1.1 million buildings, 400,000 of which are commercial and 700,000 of which are residential. To drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption, we need to electrify/decarbonize virtually this entire building portfolio by replacing their gas-burning furnaces and boilers with high-efficiency all-electric heat pumps. Heat pumps produce much lower-temperature heat than gas-burning devices (130°F compared to 210°F), triggering a need to retrofit the building envelope to add insulation and make it more efficient.
The best practice for adding insulation is to thicken the wall to the exterior to avoid having to sacrifice living space. Here’s where zoning comes in: If a building is built tight to its zoning setbacks, that insulation will be considered a zoning encroachment, and require zoning relief.
Opportune Timing: Recommendations Z1 and Z2 should occur during major updates while Z3 and Z4 may be adopted at any time.
RFPs for Development
R1: Urban Design and Architectural Guidelines
Many planners and urban designers prepare urban or architectural design guidelines, often to guide the look and feel of new development. The default setting for many of these guidelines is to require a brick-plus-punched-windows aesthetic, a barrier to decarbonization. To accommodate thicker wall insulation, new high-performance buildings are likely to specify thinner, lighter-weight façade materials. To achieve high levels of energy efficiency, the upper floor façades of high-performance residential buildings rarely have more than 20-25% glass. Requirements for masonry facades or minimum glass percentages above 25% would introduce an unnecessary barrier to decarbonization.
R2: New All-Electric Subdivisions
The climate emergency compels us to rethink whether gas utilities should be extended to new subdivisions. The conventional practice, reinforced by utility franchise agreements, is for gas service to be extended to every new development. This is institutionalized in a series of agreements between utility companies and governments that are memorialized in franchise agreements and utility easements in the right of way. Planners should be aware it may not be possible to ban gas service from new developments. One potential workaround may be to prohibit certain uses of fossil fuels such as in heating, clothes drying, or cooking systems through the building code, or an HOA.
This recommendation is not for the faint of heart and demands time and resources to pull off, but for municipalities that are taking climate action seriously, this recommendation is essential.
Opportune Timing: Early in the entitlement phase of land development.
RESOURCES
Climate Action Museum
The Climate Action Museum is a resource for planners to educate themselves and their clients on best practices in decarbonization and climate action. Click here to visit the Climate Action Museum website and learn more.
Author: Doug Farr, FAIA, Founder, Farr Associates
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