When storms pummeled northwest Indiana in August, the town of Beverly Shores was left without power for days. Some people were left in the dark for a week.Violeta Burokas didn't know about the outage until she received an alert from her utility provider NIPSCO. Her home was fully powered thanks to energy stored from her rooftop solar panels.“I didn't really even notice,” Burokas said. “I had friends coming over to charge things and spend the night so they could take a hot shower.”So what set Burokas’ home apart from neighbors? Her passive house.Passive homes are a type of building that drastically reduce energy use and carbon emissions, attracting growing interest in the United States, with Massachusetts, New York and Washington integrating passive home standards into their building codes. And passive building is starting to see lift off in Chicago, from single-family homes to one mixed-use development that will be the city's largest passive home project.Burokas' property was built with triple-pane windows, an extra-thick layer of insulation and thicker walls. These kinds of elements mean the home's greenhouse gas emissions are close to net zero — and once she installs another handful of rooftop solar panels, she'll hit zero. Her home’s extra energy is stored in batteries. When they're full, the excess power flows back into the grid. Violeta Burokas uses the Tesla app to monitor her home’s energy usage and solar production.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Burokas’ electricity bill last month was $37.“I have no other bills except my cell phone, so it was kind of crazy,” she said.With energy bills on the rise across the Chicago area, Alexander Eisenschmidt, a University of Illinois Chicago architecture professor, expects that interest among homeowners and developers in building passive homes will continue to grow.“The evidence is very clear that it reduces energy bills and that is absolutely a good argument to bring people over,” Eisenschmidt said. “It is certainly one of the key aspects in this struggle for affordability.”Across the United States, the typical electrified home consumes 11,000 kilowatts of power a year — three times the annual global average, according to Eisenschmidt. He said American homes use more power because they're often larger, use more air conditioning and have less insulation.Experts also tout passive homes as a way to reduce carbon footprint. The construction industry produces a significant portion of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, which in a 2023 report called .the industry the largest emitter.“It's about time for the U.S. to catch up to what, in many parts of the world, is already sort of happening,” Eisenschmidt said of this type of sustainable building.What is passive building? Passive building is a green energy standard that focuses on insulation and making homes airtight to reduce heating and cooling loads, according to the Passive House Network. Mark Miller, an Evanston architect, started learning about passive homes during the 2008 housing market crash. He said he was always drawn to solar architecture and sustainable building practices, and passive homes felt like the next step in his work. He designed Burokas’ home.Miller, owner of Mark A. Miller Architects/Builders, became a certified passive house consultant . He also served as executive director of Chicago-based Passive House Institute U.S..That organization, known as Phius, is among a handful of organizations that certify passive homes. It cites five key principles that make up a passive home: continuous insulation, a form of balanced heat and moisture recovery ventilation, high-performance windows and doors, an airtight building envelope and a minimal space conditioning system.In Burokas' home, the energy used for heating and cooling can be reduced by up to 90%, providing up to tens of thousands of dollars in energy savings. Architect Mark Miller stands inside client Violeta Burokas’ passive home in Beverly Shores.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Miller said passive homes have improved air quality and are more resilient against severe weather.“It made my career,” Miller said of Burokas' home maintaining power during the August storm. “If every house could function just from the sun, what an incredible victory that would be. Think of all the pollution we would be saving. We don't need all this fossil-fuel nonsense and all the pollution that it's making."But passive buildings are more expensive — usually 3% to 5% costlier than a conventional home because high-performance products like windows and doors aren't readily available in the United States, according to Phius.Burokas paid more than $1 million to build her home, in part because she opted for higher-quality finishes.“Even though it costs a little more to build a house with those standards, I feel like I'm saving money monthly just by having it so well insulated and so well built,” she said.Passive homes often take longer to build, too. Burokas' home took 18 months to build, compared with nine to 12 months for a traditional home, though Miller said certain delays contributed to the longer timeline.Passive commercial buildings, tooPassive building also can be applied to apartments and other commercial buildings — and often it’s easier and cheaper, according to Phius“We've seen a significant uptick in multifamily certification,” said Max Lapthorne, Phius' communications manager. “The window-to-wall ratio and how things scale on the larger projects, it actually makes it easier to hit the targets for certification.”Though Chicago is a few years behind coastal areas for passive building, Lapthorne said more multifamily projects are springing up across city. Chicago’s largest passive house project, called Humboldt Park Passive Living, is now under construction. Construction on Humboldt Park Passive Living, which is part of the city of Chicago’s Invest South/West initiative, began in May 2025. It is Phius-certified. Sealant material covers the mixed-use development Humboldt Park Passive Living by developer 548 Enterprise, which will be Chicago’s largest passive building.Jim Urquhart/For the Sun-Times The four-story building at 3831 W. Chicago Ave. will bring 60 affordable apartments and commercial space to an area of Humboldt Park that’s “starving for retail,” Robert "A.J." Patton, CEO of 548 Enterprise, said.The units — a mix of studios, one-, two- and three-bedrooms — will be for renters making an average 60% of the area median income, Patton said. Some units will be available for those at 30% AMI. Pre-leasing will start in the winter. Renters’ utility bills will be 33% to 50% lower than in neighboring buildings because it's a passive build, Patton said. “When you think about sustainable commitments, do you think about West Humboldt Park? Or is this more of a Schaumburg kind of thing?” Patton said. “I think that's what makes it special is doing this on the West Side of Chicago. This community deserves these types of technologies."Patton's passion for clean energy stems from his childhood. He said his family was unable to pay a $400 gas bill, so the gas was shut off. He sees passive building as a pathway to cheaper utility bills.Patton views Humboldt Park Passive Living, his first passive project, as his “flagship.” 548 Enterprise CEO A.J. PattonJim Urquhart/For the Sun-Times The building is blanketed in R38 insulation, thicker than typical insulation and made of fiberglass. The walls are thicker, and triple-pane windows help regulate the temperature year-round. A solar farm will also be installed in the winter, and the project will include a public EV charging lot.It’s the first passive project Quintin Huckabee, senior project manager at 548 Enterprise, has worked on. He said it required a bit more advance work and coordination, but it hasn’t taken much longer than building a conventional apartment building.Patton said his second passive project will be in South Chicago, called Galleria 89. It'll be slightly smaller at 57 units and will include more apartments for those at 30% AMI.Eisenschmidt said Chicago has the experts to build more passive homes, but there's a lack of public awareness and a shortage of developers who know how to build to passive standards. Bifold glass doors separate the kitchen and three season room at Violeta Burokas’ passive home in Beverly Shores.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Miller has designed passive homes from Beverly Shores to Kalamazzo, Michigan. He said a fair amount of clients don’t know what passive houses are when he pitches the idea to them. Some clients are receptive. Others aren’t.Then there’s the rare client, like Burokas, who seek out architects like Miller because they want a passive home. Miller hopes Burokas’ home being showcased in the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour, an open house for homes powered by solar, will help spread more awareness.Burokas purchased the lot where her home sits when she was 22. After learning about passive homes from a friend, she tore down the old cottage on the site to build what she now considers her dream home.Burokas has been able to weather the poor air quality caused by Canadian wildfires earlier this summer because of the building's air filtration system, in addition to severe storms like those last month.“Even though me, personally, by myself, I'm not going to make a huge difference with climate change or anything like that, I didn't want to contribute to it,” she said. Violeta Burokas looks out one of the large windows inside her passive house in Beverly Shores.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times ...read more read less