- The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities just unveiled a new package of incentives for homeowners to give up their oil and gas furnaces in favor of electric heat pumps. The incentives come under the state’s Mass Save program as part of the its new Three‑Year Energy Efficiency Plan for electric and gas distribution companies. Overall, the plan is expected to save customers $8 billion over three years while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
- In California, the Building Decarbonization Initiative has just released a fossil fuel conversion roadmap, which calls for adopting zero-emission building codes for residential and commercial buildings by 2025 and 2027, respectively. Naturally that means zero-emission appliances have a big role to play. A new California building code requires all new homes to be built with on-site renewable energy, and the state is also implementing new incentives to encourage heat pumps over gas appliances. BDI notes that builders can also benefit from reduced costs:…the alternatives are here and at cost with natural gas appliances. In fact, by avoiding gas infrastructure to and in a building we are finding that all-electric construction can be cheaper than buildings with gas.That provides an opening for rolling fair housing and economic justice into fossil fuel conversion. Stephanie Wang of the California Housing Partnership explains:
This policy roadmap highlights a key best practice for addressing the housing crisis – empower affordable housing developers to tap the full range of innovative low-carbon technologies so they can choose the options with the lowest upfront costs and greatest bill savings for residents.
And of course, job creation factors in. BDI cites Chris Walker of the California Association of Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors, who notes that retrofitting “hundreds of thousand of buildings” is “actually a huge economic and workforce opportunity.”
California commissioners anticipate the new mandate will add $40 more to a monthly mortgage payment, but with an $80 return on heating, cooling and lighting over a 30-year term. The upfront cost to a single-family house will be approximately $9,500 with savings of $19,000 over 30 years.
Building Fossil Fuel to Electricity Conversion, Feb 19, 2019 Clean Technica
Just last fall, CleanTechnica took note of a new campaign to switch buildings out of fossil fuel and into electricity, and all of a sudden things are blowing up all over the place. The latest two developments involve two heavy-hitting states in the renewable energy field, California and Massachusetts.
Why Electrify Buildings?
Okay, so the building electrification field is not quite as flush-in-your-cheeks exciting as the latest news out of Tesla, but it rates an 11 out of 10 on the sustain-o-meter.
Here in the US, residential and commercial buildings account for about 40% of total energy consumption. By comparison, the transportation sector accounts for 30%. In other words, even if you Musk-ify every car, truck, train, plane and boat in the US, you still get more bang for your buck tackling the challenge of energy use in buildings.
During the Obama administration the focus was mainly on energy efficiency, and the main portal for action was the Energy Department’s Better Buildings initiative. That portal is still very active (a tutorial on energy assessment for data centers is slated for February 19).
Fossil Fuel And Building Electrification
Now that more renewable energy is entering the electric grid, the focus is turning to weaning buildings from depending on fossil fuel — mainly natural gas and oil — for heating, cooling, and cooking.
For obvious reasons, though, the Energy Department is handling the issue of electric conversion with kid gloves. After all, who wants to annoy oil and gas stakeholders? That includes overseas fossil fuel stakeholders that export to the US, as well as domestic companies.
Nonprofit organizations are under no such restrictions, which explains by the Rocky Mountain Institute took the lead last year, with a newly launched campaign aimed at incentivizing building owners to convert from gas and oil to electricity.
Converting From Fossil Fuel Too Electricity: It’s Complicated
Last fall CleanTechnica interviewed RMI’s electrification campaign director, Bruce Nilles, who observed that current rate structures work against electricity conversion.
Nilles’s experience converting from fossil fuel to electricity in his own home bears that out. The problem began at the beginning, as he searched in vain for a contractor who would take on the job. For the most part, contractors tried to solve his problem by encouraging him to buy more efficient appliances. When he finally found a contractor, the verdict was a pain in the wallet. Over and above the cost of new appliances, he was looking at three different permit applications that added up to $925.00.
Ouch!
That helped provide Nilles with a firm grasp on the challenges ahead.
“About a year ago I realized that in California, gas consumption in buildings is as much as gas consumption in power plants,” he explained. “We now have a trajectory to get gas out of our power sector, but there is no such ambition, conversation or suite of programs to do same for buildings…the conversation is only happening in a few small pockets now.”
Electrification Suddenly Blows Up
Before coming to RMI, Nilles’s track record included the Sierra Club’s successful Beyond Coal campaign, so he also had a good grasp on the potential for a successful campaign to exorcise fossil fuel from buildings.
Sure enough, things are already picking up steam.
In the latest development, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities just unveiled a new package of incentives for homeowners to give up their oil and gas furnaces in favor of electric heat pumps.
The incentives come under the state’s Mass Save program as part of the its new Three‑Year Energy Efficiency Plan for electric and gas distribution companies. Overall, the plan is expected to save customers $8 billion over three years while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Here’s the money quote:
The plan shifts electric programs to recognize the benefits of strategic electrification, and for the first time in Massachusetts offers incentive programs for fuel switching – targeting oil and propane customers for fuel conversion to more efficient and affordable heating fuels and technologies such as air source heat pumps.
New incentives for Passive House construction are also part of the deal. Basically, that means that the state is teasing the state’s building industry over to avoid gas and oil appliances in new construction.
The three-year plan is consistent with the state’s broader Comprehensive Energy Plan, which includes energy used for heating among its main focuses:
…Many aspects of this energy efficiency plan were included in the CEP recommendations which included policy strategies to target reductions in thermal sector consumption, drive consumer demand for energy efficiency measures, promote fuel switching from expensive, higher carbon intensive fuels to lower cost, lower carbon fuels, and invest in research and development for clean heating fuels.
Fossil Fuel And California: It’s Complicated
In political terms, it helps that Massachusetts has little in the way of a homegrown lobby for oil and gas, at least not in the extraction part of the supply chain.
The situation is different in California, where the fossil fuel sector still wields some degree of political clout.
Nevertheless, state policy makers are continuing to press for an electrification initiative. To keep the pressure up, something called the Building Decarbonization Initiative has just released a fossil fuel conversion roadmap.
The new “Roadmap to Decarbonize California’s Buildings” calls for adopting zero-emission building codes for residential and commercial buildings by 2025 and 2027, respectively. Naturally that means zero-emission appliances have a big role to play.
Adding to the intrigue, a new California building code requires all new homes to be built with on-site renewable energy, and the state is also implementing new incentives to encourage heat pumps over gas appliances.
BDI notes that builders can also benefit from reduced costs:
…the alternatives are here and at cost with natural gas appliances. In fact, by avoiding gas infrastructure to and in a building we are finding that all-electric construction can be cheaper than buildings with gas.
That provides an opening for rolling fair housing and economic justice into fossil fuel conversion. Stephanie Wang of the California Housing Partnership explains:
This policy roadmap highlights a key best practice for addressing the housing crisis – empower affordable housing developers to tap the full range of innovative low-carbon technologies so they can choose the options with the lowest upfront costs and greatest bill savings for residents.
And of course, job creation factors in. BDI cites Chris Walker of the California Association of Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors, who notes that retrofitting “hundreds of thousand of buildings” is “actually a huge economic and workforce opportunity.”
Do tell!
If fossil fuel conversion is a gunfight, BDI is bringing a howitzer. In addition to environmental non-profits its member roster is packed with leading cities (California, Palo Alto, San Jose), utility companies, and appliance manufactures (Rheem, Mitsubishi) among other heavy hitters like the global real estate powerhouse Cushman & Wakefield.
CleanTechnica is reaching out Cushman for some insights from the real estate perspective, so stay tuned for more on that.
Follow me on Twitter.
Photo: Building Decarbonization Initiative.
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- In California most new homes and multi-family residential buildings up to three stories high will include solar rooftop panels beginning in 2020.
- Net-zero energy homes can produce as much energy as they consume and are built to optimize energy efficiency through airtight construction of roofs, walls, windows and foundations.
- The U.S. has an estimated 5,000 net-zero energy single-family homes today; California could add 100,000 a year.
In 2013 De Young Properties built a single-family house in central California that defied nearly three generations worth of homes the family business had constructed. It was a net-zero energy building — it had the potential to produce as much energy as it would consume in a year. De Young didn’t build another one for four years, but within that period the company refined its designs to be more energy-efficient and technology-focused and drove down costs.
“Energy bills tend to be pretty high and onerous, and you usually have to sacrifice comfort for your energy bill or your energy bill for comfort, and we saw an opportunity to advance in this realm and become a leader,” said Brandon De Young, executive vice president.
In 2017 De Young Properties started the process of constructing three communities near Fresno, California, with more than 140 single-family homes in three different communities that will have the same level of energy efficiency. So far the homebuilder has constructed half of the first community, Envision at Loma Vista, and is in the process of beginning the other two. The cost of each home is typically between $350,000 and $450,000 — and carries an additional $10,000 over the cost of De Young’s comparable non-zero energy properties.
The homebuilder’s early investment in zero-energy construction was prescient. If you buy a new house in California within the next few years, there’s a good chance it will be built along similar lines. In December, California instituted a new requirement that calls for most new homes and multi-family residential buildings up to three stories high to include solar rooftop panels beginning in 2020. Depending on the specifics of the design and the residence’s energy consumption pattern, solar panels could produce all the electricity needed for the home. The state’s ultimate goal is to produce net-zero energy homes that reduce the state’s carbon footprint and make buildings energy self-sufficient.
California is one of the world’s largest economies
This is the first time a state has built this requirement into its code, but similar regulations exist in cities like Tucson, Arizona, as well as the City of South Miami, the first introduced in Florida. Renewable energy mandates like residential rooftop solar come at a time when California has faced an unprecedented series of wildfires, with at least some of the natural disasters linked to more extreme weather patterns in an era of climate change.
The Net-Zero Energy Coalition estimates the U.S. has only 5,000 net-zero energy single-family homes and over 7,000 net-zero multi-family homes. That number could expand in 2020 to over 100,000 net-zero energy homes, based on the average annual new home constructions in California.
“California by itself is one of the largest economies in the world,” said Jacob Corvidae, a principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute. “What happens there has some impact, and it’s going to be an impact that has an effect on the rest of the country because they’re going to be figuring out ways to make solar cheaper and that scale will help bring down the cost.”
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated about 39 percent of the total energy consumed in the country was in the residential and commercial sectors. A majority of the energy was produced by fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas.
Net-zero energy and zero energy-ready homes — which can be zero energy if solar panels are installed or their capacities are increased — are built to be more energy efficient than a typical building. This includes adding extra insulation, high-quality windows, LED lighting, low-flow water fixtures, heat-reflecting roof tiles and energy-efficient appliances that, when combined, reduce the amount of energy the house consumes.
On the outside, the houses are built to optimize energy efficiency with significant airtight construction and economical roofs, walls, windows and foundations, said Sam Rashkin, Chief Architect of the Building Technologies Office in the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. These technologies also allow for better temperature regulation, low-humidity, less noise and minimize exposure to dangerous pollutants.
There is no one-size-fits-all design for zero-energy homes. In De Young’s housing market, the modern style — homes you might find on a Google search with flat walls and a box-like look — are not as prevalent, so the company configured the homes to come in an array of styles, such as cottage, modern-farmhouse, and Italian-inspired variations.
“You don’t have to do it that [modern] way. We found out that you can build a zero-energy home that looks just as beautiful as any other home,” De Young said.
Costs of going zero energy
California commissioners anticipate the new mandate will add $40 more to a monthly mortgage payment, but with an $80 return on heating, cooling and lighting over a 30-year term. The upfront cost to a single-family house will be approximately $9,500 with savings of $19,000 over 30 years.
Ann Edminster, a board member of the Net-Zero Energy Coalition and a green building consultant, argues that people shouldn’t be thinking of the upfront costs in isolation. Home buyers can make decisions in a house’s design that offset the additional costs for net zero-energy upgrades, such as sacrificing decorative housing elements.
“It’s the same thing as asking for a roof rack on your car. You’re going to pay extra,” Edminster said, referring to design choices homeowners already make which result in higher costs, and in some cases, less energy efficiency.
In De Young’s case, making a home energy efficient usually costs an additional $10,000 before adding solar panels, which makes the home zero energy. Purchasing a solar system outright could add between six to 12 percent to the price, De Young said. The company has a partnership with Tesla which offers zero-down leases on its solar panels, among other financing options. In 2017, 41 percent of residential solar was owned by a third-party, which includes monthly leases and power purchase agreements, or PPAs, that allow customers to pay per kilowatt-hour of generation.
Charles Kibert, a professor at the University of Florida’s College of Design, Construction and Planning, said there are some drawbacks to relying on solar. The panels require ample roof space, a certain orientation that allows for optimum energy production and consistent weather conditions.
“All those factors put together and my experience is that you have to try really hard to have a net zero home,” Kibert said, adding that how people manage their home is a big factor. “Living behavior every day drives energy consumption pretty reliably.”
Problems with the grid
The issues go beyond individual homes to the grid itself.
Kibert said there are two methods for reducing the carbon footprint beyond zero-energy homes: a low-carbon grid and better renewable energy storage. The current method of generating energy for most grids still depends on fossil fuels, but he said a few have moved to renewable energy like hydropower. California is far ahead of many U.S. states with its utilities already producing between 30 percent to 40 percent of energy from renewable sources.
Storing produced renewable energy remains costly, which is why people remain connected to the grid.
“If you had storage in your home and you were careful about your energy consumption, you would be effectively off the grid,” Kibert said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about it, but storage is expensive.”
Tesla’s Powerwall home storage solution has a cost of roughly $7,000 per unit. Tesla recommends two units for a home to be powered 100 percent with renewable energy and have at least 24 hours of power during a utility outage, which brings the total cost to over $14,000 — excluding installation costs that range from $1,000 to $3,000, according to the company.
Edminster said it is clear that the grid will not be disappearing anytime soon. The California mandate only requires homes to meet a higher level of efficiency and use solar, but that doesn’t mean residents won’t be able to use gas from the grid — it only offsets electricity use.
She said we are much further along in building energy-efficient homes than energy-efficient grids. “The efficiency side is pretty dialed in so that if someone felt like being zero-net energy by placing solar panels on their roof they probably would be pretty close to being zero-net energy.”
Zero-energy homes highlight a commitment to efficiency and the effort to reduce individual energy consumption. Ultimately, the objective is to find a healthy, reduced level of energy consumption. “What we really want is at the level of the social fabric to have our energy consumption to be met by renewable sources,” Edminster said. “That’s the big goal.”
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that California’s new requirement mandating solar rooftop panels on new homes beginning in 2020 applies to multi-family residences up to three stories.
