How can we help everyone participate in the clean energy revolution?

Everyone must participate!

Cutting GHG emissions, energy costs, toxic emissions, and achieving other co-benefits of clean energy requires that everyone participates—all communities, all income levels, homeowners and renters, everywhere. This is a tall order, but the cost of clean energy products will continue to drop and drive exponential adoptions.

The household electrification funnel

Any sales process moves the customer from awareness to interest to decisions to purchasing, and households adopting clean energy are no different. Spreading the word about electrification and clean energy gets potential adopters interested—they may want to:

  • save some money,

  • make their house more comfortable or more healthy,

  • help the environment,

  • get the advantages their neighbors are telling you about, or

  • take more control of their energy.

What is electrification? A fully electrified household can look something like this:

A household may already have some of these features. Most of these features can be acquired and installed independently of the other features, and deliver benefits. The most economic strategy for upgrading is to plan for electrifying when an appliance or vehicle needs replacement. If the homeowner can replace any one of these, nearly all of the newer products are more energy efficient and will save money on the energy used. An electric vehicle uses about 1/5 as much energy as a gasoline or diesel vehicle—saving lots on fuel! A heat pump space heater (and cooler) or a heat pump water heater uses around 1/3 as much energy as a gas or electric resistance heater. Etc.

Information on electrification: There are several non-profit organizations providing excellent general information on electrified appliances, electric vehicles, and electrification:

Electrify Now has information and webinars on electrifying your electricity, your home, and your vehicles.

Rewiring America provides more information, a home electrification planner, and more.

Canopy provides a primer called Electrification 101.

Many vendors and contractors also provide good information about their products, but the above links are very useful to understand the important parameters to compare.

Some decision complexities: However, an overall household electrification plan should also include interactions between some of these features. For example, most electric vehicle (EV) owners prefer to have a 220-volt EV charger, which requires adding a circuit (much like a dryer circuit) to the electric load center (breaker panel.) An electric water heater, stove, or clothes dryer may also need a new circuit in the load center if the replaced unit uses gas. In some cases the load center might need to be upgraded for larger current capability. Solar panels require a good geometry for sunshine throughout the day and seasons. Solar panels or batteries require enough space near the load center for mounting the solar inverter, batteries, and other boxes. Etc.

An important consideration not shown in this figure is the building envelope—how insulated and sealed are the walls, windows, doors? If the building was constructed before around 1990, it probably requires far more energy to heat or cool it than a more recently built house. Regardless of the type of space heating used, any building will be more energy-efficient and more comfortable if it has a well-sealed and well-insulated envelope. The envelope performance directly implies the size of the heat pump space heating/cooling required.

At this point, homeowners probably have more questions than ever, such as:

  • I’m excited to electrify. Where should I start?

  • I have old windows. Shouldn’t I replace them?

  • Are there good DIY weatherization projects?

  • What the heck is a BTU?

  • Is normal air leakage ok? Don’t homes need to breathe?

  • I already added insulation. Why do air sealing?

  • Do I need a home energy audit?

  • What makes heat pumps so special?

  • Will I need to upgrade my load center (electric panel)?

  • How do I find good contractors?

Note that electrifying one’s transportation can be relatively simpler than electrifying one’s house—just buy a new or used electric vehicle and wire up a home charger. And depending on how much it’s driven, an EV can save more on energy costs than a house (see below.)

How can we lead homeowners through the decision complexities?

This is where you can be a key resource—if you’re willing to learn a bit about building science, heat pumps, and various practical details about electrifying buildings, then you can be useful resource for explaining the basics or simply knowing when to refer questions to other volunteers or contractors.

The next level is to take a free short-course from Rewiring America to train you to be an electrification coach. Such coaches are not at the level of contractors needed to install the new features, but they know enough about the opportunities and pitfalls to guide most homeowners through the process and recommend local contractors. The coaches are all volunteers, so they can provide objective advice and aren’t trying to sell anything.

Electrify Oregon coaching network: Electrify Oregon and their member organizations will soon launch a statewide network of electrification coaches, who are knowledgeable, unpaid, trained volunteers who can help with your specific questions, such as those above. Eric Strid at CGCAN can help to locate a coach for Gorge-specific information and contractors, or facilitate your coach training.

How can homeowners and landlords get financing?

Incentives available: There are many existing and nascent incentives available in Oregon and Washington. Expect that incentives may be specific to your utility, your income level, your zipcode, whether the program is currently funded, or other variables. To aid homeowners in navigating the complex and dynamic list of incentives available in Oregon, the Oregon Department of Energy recently created a web page called Energy Hub for Incentive Programs and Projects (HIPO).

Energy Trust of Oregon (ETO) has for decades been providing rebate programs for weatherization and energy improvements for residential, commercial, and agricultural customers of investor-owned utilities (IOUs, meaning Pacific Power and NW Natural in the Gorge.) Check out their extensive site for information, calculators, and ETO-vetted contractors.

For Washington, check out the incentives list at Washington Climate Action.

Incentives for low- or middle-income families

In addition to the above incentive programs, the Oregon Department of Energy is about to launch a new program for low-income families, to be administered by ETO.

Bonneville Environmental Foundation supports a Solar for All program outside of the IOU territories.

Typical emission and energy cost numbers for your household:

An estimate of your household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions also happens to correlate well with your major energy costs and your major toxic emissions. (This is not to replace the strategy to replace an emitting device when necessary, but it can inform some relative priorities.)

This example with the Berkeley CoolClimate calculator demonstrates a scenario to cut an average household’s emissions in half:

After electrifying this averaage household’s vehicles and gas appliances, cutting air travel and meat consumption in half, and using 80% clean electricity, the total emissions are cut in half:

County-wide impacts are, to first order, similar to the per-capita energy usages multiplied by the population. This graph illustrates the business-as-usual estimates from the county energy inventory, for the average annual household energy costs in Hood River County. It illustrates how the light-duty vehicles (grey) in the county dominate the current household energy costs. Through 2050 the gradual EV adoptions significantly decrease the energy use from gasoline, while the electricity usage (green) increases due to vehicle electrification—but only slightly because the EVs will use so much less energy than the gasoline vehicles.

The next graph illustrates another scenario with high ambitions in the electrification of vehicles (grey), residential and commercial building electrification (blue), and building efficiencies (decreasing green.) For a population of about 30,000 in 2050, the energy savings for the county is over $60 million annually. Other co-benefits include lower healthcare costs from lower toxic emissions, keeping energy spending in or near the county, lower maintenance costs, higher energy resilience, and more.