setting a new standard

jack jordan, executive director of climate action evanston, says the ordinance is essentially a standard for building performance. 

“when we think about a building, how does a building perform? can you think about an athlete performing? a building performs for how much energy it’s using, where that energy is coming from, how energy efficient it is,” jordan said. 

buildings emit greenhouse gases a number of ways, depending on the type of building it is. residential buildings using natural gas appliances, such as stoves and furnaces, emit more than buildings that use electrical appliances. an example of a modification that could be implemented through the hbo is the electrification of natural gas appliances, such as water heaters, stoves and furnaces. 

jordan emphasizes that the transformation of these buildings will not only reduce emissions, but it will also improve indoor air quality as residents make the switch to electric appliances over natural-gas ones. 

connecting the community

the hbo also outlines a rulemaking process that creates two public bodies, the healthy buildings accountability board (hbab) and the healthy buildings technical committee (hbtc). 

the hbtc will focus on the technical aspects of transforming a building to use clean energy, while the hbab will be focused on equity concerns that arise as the buildings are modified. 

the two rulemaking bodies will take input from local community members and building owners over the course of the next year to design a plan for each building to begin to meet its net-zero goal. 

“the intent is not to raise rents, in particular, for folks that are in buildings that are either designated affordable housing or that we just want to maintain affordability,” said paula scholl, chair of the building electrification working group and member of the evanston environment board. “there will be a process by which at least 20% of the buildings will be considered equity prioritized. those would not only include affordable housing, but could also include our schools and houses of worship.”

most of the buildings included in the ordinance are located in evanston’s first, third, fourth and seventh wards. the seventh ward, home to northwestern university, has 91 buildings listed to be updated as part of the ordinance. other buildings included in the hbo are local schools, such as evanston township high school, apartment building complexes, the northshore evanston hospital, among others. 

councilwoman clare kelly, the only dissenting vote during the city council meeting that led to the passage of the hbo, argued that the ordinance was rushed, saying during the meeting that the city is “jumping to the end” of the process rather than laying out specific details and plans for each building before passing the ordinance. 

sustainable buildings of the future

the hbo will not only provide health benefits for evanston residents, but it will also create jobs, including for technicians to make upgrades, and lower energy costs for building owners in the long-term, jordan said. 

“this is a pathway to very well-paying sustainable employment, you know, technical employment that i think a lot of our young people would really appreciate, hands on work that is actively saving the planet,” he said. 

new york city and st. louis, among others, have established building codes focused on sustainability and energy efficiency. in st. louis, the building energy performance standard was passed in may 2020, and it targets municipal, commercial, institutional and residential properties 50,000 square feet and larger. 

“the more cities that do it, the more we get ideas, too. no ordinance is static. you can always change it and revise it and make it better over the years. so that’s the other thing is we want to encourage other folks to try something, and we’ll try to get the best ideas from everybody,” she said.

when high school senior iris shadis-greengas of naperville, ilinois, wanted to see mandatory climate change education across the state, she took dramatic action, writing state legislation as part of a school assignment to try to make that happen. 

“i thought that would be the best way to make climate education something that was the most available for everyone, at least in the state,” she said. 

shadis-greengas wrote the proposed bill as part of her capstone project at naperville central high school, one of two illinois students that helped write the legislation. in august 2024, shadis-greengas’s project saw success when illinois governor jb pritzker signed house bill 4895 into law, mandating that all public schools provide instruction on climate change. 

the bill, which comes into effect beginning in the 2026-2027 school year, mandates climate change education but gives school districts the flexibility to determine how to incorporate the topic into their curriculum. the state board of education will provide instructional materials and resources. 

blazing a new trail

illinois is the fifth state to require climate change education, following in the footsteps of california, connecticut, new jersey, and new york. 

after helping author the bill, shadis-greengas advocated for the bill before it was sent through the illinois legislature, submitting advocacy forms called witness slips.

“i sent a lot of emails for witness slips,” she said. “just encouraging people to show the assembly that they supported it and they thought it was a good idea.” 

she worked with state legislators including rep. janet yang rohr, a sponsor of the bill, to see her idea come to fruition. 

another student who advocated for the bill was katie stabb of mit, who spoke about the bill at various events across illinois.

“what we were doing was just going around getting people aware of the bill,” she said. 

one of the most meaningful moments during the process, says stabb, was going into an elementary school to speak about the bill. 

“it was really amazing to see how much they already knew about climate change,” she said. “it was just, kind of getting a peek into what it could be like if students everywhere were able to have this information and that would empower them to be taking action.” 

youth are increasingly becoming the face of the environmentalist movement, as many fear for their future as the climate crisis worsens. for stabb, one solution lies in early climate change education. 

“the small kids would be a force to be reckoned with. i think we generally underestimate them,” said stabb. 

manolo avalos, an intern for climate education 4 illinois, worked with stabb in advocating for the bill across the state. he recalls an experience in the seventh grade where he grew trout in a tank and went on a field trip to release the trout. 

“i think how most schools need to be structured is, especially with environmental stuff, experiential learning, because after that field trip, i came back with questions, so did everyone else, for the teacher, and that’s how you really get students engaged,” he said. 

climate education at a crossroads

the bill faced opposition before it passed, however, as rep. adam neimerg (r-dieterich) called the bill “another very bad mandate on teachers to be indoctrinated on the ‘climate change’ ideology who will then be expected to pass that ideology onto our children.” 

“only 36 percent of our students are proficient in reading and math and that should be the focus of teachers, not indoctrinating on one political ideology over another,” said rep. neimerg. 

shadis-greengas hopes the bill and subsequent climate education in schools will inspire youth who feel powerless in the face of climate change to take action. 

“i think education is the most vital thing that we can focus on, because it’s really just the way that people learn about it that’s going to determine whether they grow up to be responsible members of their community, and that they feel like they have the power to encourage their own legislators to take action about this,” she said. 

tromsø, nor – it’s near impossible to go out to eat in tromsø, the second biggest city north of the arctic circle, and not see fish on the menu. one of the most popular types of fish served in norway, a country known for its seafood, is salmon. and with exports valued at more than $15 billion per year, it’s a fish that norway now provides for dinner tables the world over. 

salmon is one of the most-farmed fish in norway’s aquaculture industry, which works by raising fish offshore in large open-net pens. norway’s salmon farms produce the highest amount of farmed salmon in the world at about 1.2 million tonnes each year. 

but tiny organisms known as “sea lice” are infecting farmed salmon populations at high levels. 

for the salmon industry, “sea lice is the number one problem here in norway,” said jelena kolaveric, a professor and researcher at the arctic university of norway in tromsø. 

a growing problem for arctic salmon farms

first prevalent in salmon farms along the southern coast of the country, the lice have spread to affect farms along the northern coast. and the climate change connection is clear: warmer water temperatures allow sea lice to reproduce faster. so as northern waters rise in temperature, even just a few degrees, the problem is spreading into the arctic.

monica eide, a community contact for gratanglaks, a salmon farming company based in the grantangen municipality in troms, norway, said this summer was particularly bad for salmon farms in northern norway.  

“we had a marine heat wave in the arctic this summer, and the temperature increased by 4-5 degrees,”  said elisabeth ytteborg, a senior researcher at nofima, whose research focuses primarily on climate change impacts to aquaculture. all that heat, says ytteborg, has led to “a sea lice explosion in the north”

but the process of fighting off the lice has its own challenges. the salmon farming industry in norway, and across the world, has received criticism for some of its negative environmental impacts. these include dumping chemicals into the oceans to get rid of the lice, diseases spreading to wild salmon populations, and farmed salmon escaping and interbreeding with wild salmon.  

delousing: harder than it looks

a longstanding method of treating the lice is to take the salmon out of the sea, remove lice in tanks on land, and return the salmon to their offshore pens. but this method isn’t ideal. 

“we’re hoping to find a system where we don’t have to take them up because that’s stressing the fish,” said eide. “what we really would like to do is to get rid of lice without handling the fish that much, without taking it out from the sea.” 

another, more recent method, which is employed at gratanglaks, is to use lasers to detect lice, and once detected, the lasers shoot at the lice to kill them off one by one. according to kvaroy arctic, a salmon farming company, the salmon aren’t hurt by the process. however, individually killing off the lice is time consuming. 

kolaveric’s research aims to address some of those environmental concerns with salmon farming. what if salmon farming could be done in tanks on land kept free of sea lice or other pathogens?  her research is primarily on recirculating aquaculture systems (ras). this is a relatively new type of technology where seawater is recycled and reused to produce salmon in water tanks on land. a challenge this system faces is that trying to replicate on land the ecological needs the salmon receive from ocean water can be expensive and energy intensive. however, kolaveric hopes it will push the industry forward to a more sustainable method of salmon production. 

“these recirculation systems, they give you an opportunity to better control the environment, and also give you flexibility,” said kolaveric. “because in a ras system, you can adjust your temperature, you can adjust your oxygen.” that control, she says, can prevent lice from infesting the pools. 

seeking holistic solutions

ytteborg emphasizes that it’s important to keep in mind that the fish aren’t solely affected by rising temperatures, but also the various stressors associated with salmon farming in general, such as viruses, bacteria and parasites. there is also the stress coming from the production itself, vaccinations, transportation and treatment. 

she emphasizes the value in doing more research to try to understand how a fluctuating environment will affect the fish on top of other stressors.  

“we need to work more trans-sectoral. biologists like me need to work with the climatologists to understand how the environment will change and how it may impact the animals, and then we need to work with the industry to see what kind of measures they have and what kind of procedures they do,” said ytteborg. “and then it’s not like one size fits all because climate change will affect one area very differently from another one and different strategies are needed.” 

eide, whose company aims to find more sustainable methods of lice treatment and salmon production, highlights the relationship between salmon farmers and the fish themselves. 

“we want them to be healthy, we want them to have a good time. we don’t want to hurt them, but there’s also a lot of things happening in the industry that aren’t good,” said eide. “not all of us are aware of what we’re doing to the fish so i think we have a lot of things that we could be better on, and i think we should be open about that too.”

denmark is one of the best recycling nations in the world, thanks to an extensive waste management system. waste in denmark is sorted into various categories, such as plastics, metals, glass, food waste, cardboard and more. this kind of waste sorting happens at both a household level, where residents sort their small, everyday items, and at a larger, citywide level, where residents and companies drop off their sorted waste at recycling stations. i visited a recycling center in copenhagen to get a sense of what kinds of strategies are implemented to create such an effective waste management system.