Bridging The Gap With Affordable Clean Energy Systems For Low-Income Families
Apr 13, 2022
By Anne Field in Forbes
Recently, the folks at East Bay Community Energy got to thinking about expanding its services, the better to deliver on its mission: buying clean energy and transmitting it via PG&E infrastructure to communities across the East Bay.
BlocPower installs a mini-split air source heat pump in a residential building in Oakland, CA, October 21, 2021.
With that in mind, the four-year-old not-for-profit public agency reached out to BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based company formed in 2014 that retrofits buildings in low-income communities with emission-reducing solar panels and other technology.
The result: a just-announced program for low-to-moderate income single-family households already served by EBCE, aimed at electrifying 60 homes in EBCE’s service territory. That includes installing clean heating, cooling and hot water systems, and electric appliances. The goal is to reduce indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes and boost both home values and the ability to withstand extreme weather events.
“Our hope is that we are wildly successful and we scale up the program very quickly,” says Nick Chaset, CEO of EBCE.
EMBC is providing $1.4 million of low-cost debt plus incentives in the initial phase to help homeowners fund the changes, to be paid back over 15 years. The electrification measures will include everything from heat pump water heaters to window treatments that improve air quality.
Bridging the Gap
The program will provide new applications for such equipment as ground source heat pumps, which are used to replace old furnaces, according to Chaset. “There hasn’t been as much emphasis by incumbent utilities on switching old gas appliances with new, electric ones,” he says. Gas furnaces are a major source of indoor air pollution, since they inefficiently burn natural gas and that combustion can impact air quality.
BlocPower customers usually experience 20% to 40% in savings, according to Grace Park-Bradbury, BlocPower’s general manager of the West.
Ultimately, the program aims to provide low-income residents with upgraded equipment typically requiring high up-front costs—stuff that only more-affluent homeowners can afford. According to Chaset, energy programs typically focus on such higher-income customers or give services away for free. But there are many lower-income home owners who can afford to pay their bills and need these upgraded systems. “We want to bridge that gap,” says Chaset.
BlocPower will figure out the most appropriate technology and come up with an affordable package, including EBCE incentives. It is working with local contractors to install and service the equipment. Potential users include EBCE customers who seem to have older appliances in their homes, as suggested by data analysis.
No Cookie Cutter
The approach is somewhat complex, since each home’s situation is unique. “It’s not like building new construction, where you can just replicate it on a cookie cutter basis,” says Chaset. For that reason, it’s hard to know how long the program will last before expanding to more homes. But Chaset hopes the current initiative will reveal insights into how best to engage with customers and turn them into participants.
Ultimately, says Park-Bradbury, the goal is to establish enough interest, “so we have another 600 homes and then another 6,000 and so on.”