The Household Infrastructure Challenge - Retrofitting Millions of American Homes to Save Energy, Money and CO₂
One of the grand challenges in addressing climate change is getting from global pledges to national programs to local outcomes - through policy, money, capacity and hard work
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This post is about infrastructure, but not about the bridges, roads and power plants that get the most attention. It's about the infrastructure in 93 million homes.
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Infrastructure is making headlines again.
President Joe Biden's advance team had to scurry to adjust a planned Pittsburgh visit on Friday aiming to broaden awareness of how the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law will help rebuild America's ailing underpinnings, from thousands of dangerously deteriorated bridges, roads and dams to millions of energy-wasting buildings adding to global warming.
The reason for the Pittsburgh scramble? An unfortunately apt photo op. A 50-year-old bridge that in 1974 had won a design award from a steel-construction trade association collapsed at dawn that very morning and lay in a snowy tangle in Frick Park. Luckily no one was killed, but 13 people were injured.
Biden added a visit to the site, where he described the scope of the backlog of thousands of at-risk bridges to first responders. "The idea that we have been so far behind on infrastructure, for so many years - it's just mind-boggling," Biden said, pledging to fix them all.
White House photo, @POTUS Tweet
Money for bridges and roads is already beginning to flow to Pennsylvania and other states - in amounts that engineering and scientific analyses say are really still just a down payment given decades of bipartisan neglect. (See this earlier post for more.)
But in some ways these bigger-scale projects are easy compared to another key component of the president's climate and clean-energy plan: spurring aggressive energy-saving upgrades required in tens of millions of homes, schools, offices and other buildings if the country is to cut energy waste and resulting heat-trapping emissions on the scale required to slow global warming.
More funding could still come if Democrats in Congress make one more push and pass at least the climate components of Biden's shrunken and imperiled Build Back Better package. (There are signs of life...)
Even as new money flows, though, there is no guarantee that it will be put to effective use where needed most. Some of the biggest challenges come in accelerating change in existing homes - both the big, energy-guzzling homes of the middle and upper class and drafty housing of low-income families whose budgets are most stretched.
From thousands of ailing bridges to tens of millions of energy-wasting homes
The Department of Energy estimates that the country's 129 million buildings contribute 35 percent of our climate-heating carbon emissions. Housing is about 60 percent of that total.
One key to success everywhere, of course, is shifting the supply of electricity flowing into all of those homes away from fossil fuels. That will take a lot of time. And in many regions with cold winters, heat still comes from boilers that can't be electrified. We live in the Northeast, for example, where 5.5 million homes are kept warm through frigid winters by burning heating oil. We would have loved other options, but our current and previous oil-burning houses (built in 1868 and 1932 respectively) both have steam radiator systems that cannot be refitted to work with the efficient electric heat pumps that are cutting energy bills and emissions for millions of Americans.
Our Hudson Valley home, built in 1868, has an oil-burning boiler and steam radiators. We replaced the old windows you see here, but replacing oil is harder where we live. What are your energy challenges and fixes?
We have sufficient income that we were able to invest thousands of dollars for each home in efficient windows, attic insulation and other improvements that help cut oil use and emissions.
In the house built in 1932, we found a snakeskin in a drafty attic-floor gap where insulation should have been. What's in your attic?
But taking more dramatic steps in our current brick home has remained a daunting challenge. (We are poised to move to a much smaller home in coastal Maine where we'll face new energy challenges and do what we can to address them.)
A 2020 study by a University of Michigan team, "The carbon footprint of household energy use in the United States," provided a remarkably detailed look at the variegated challenges across the United States - some 93 million homes. The study shows how each region comes with a distinctive mix of issues and solutions. Click the link above and explore.
One widespread need, according to that study and others, would be to facilitate energy audits and "whole house" energy retrofits for millions of homes.
TIP: The Department of Energy recommends using the Building Performance Institute's search tools to find local energy assessment experts and financial incentives and rebates in your state or region.
Over the next 10 years, the new infrastructure funds (and potentially part of the Build Back Better package) will bolster existing Department of Energy grant and loan programs designed to help state programs weatherizing homes, improving energy efficiency and expanding low-carbon electricity generation.
An essential priority is boosting energy transformations in low-income households. Fortunately the infrastructure package includes $3.5 billion for the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program, which is designed to reduce energy costs for a low-income household by hundreds of dollars every year.
Those financial benefits are crucial, given that energy costs frequently consume almost a third of household income for lower-income families. A federal survey in 2019 found that, for 25 million households, energy bills are so high they cut into spending on food and medicine.
The global household energy challenge
Of course the retrofitting challenge extends well beyond United States borders. A 2021 International Energy Agency report found that existing residential buildings around the world would need to be retrofitted at the rate of 2.5 percent annually to be consistent with achieving net-zero climate-heating emissions by 2050.
In England, famed for its porous houses and antiquated heating systems, climate activists have been jailed for tactics around the Insulate Britain campaign pressing the government to launch programs to retrofit all homes to low-carbon standards by 2030.
An Insulate Britain event outside the Home Office on September 22, 2021 (JamieLowe68CC BY-SA 4.0)
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From paralysis to progress, #OneHouseAtaTime
There is a fractal kind of frustration to the depth and breadth of decarbonization needs. No matter where you look, the challenges can seem paralytically profound.
Climate hawks focused on system change too often insist it's a distraction or industry-pushed deception to highlight what individuals or individual communities can do to propel progress. I reject such assertions mainly because of the demonstrated potential for neighbor-to-neighbor, community-to-community communication to make a difference.
Online connectivity and visualizations can further amplify impact. Look at the solar-power and heat-waste maps of this Canadian MyHeat project and you can immediately grasp the potential.
Local shifts in understanding and actions can then build political force accelerating changes up the chain.
With that in mind, I hope you'll explore a fantastic Twitter thread posted in 2019 by Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist, prize-winning author and anti-fossil-fuel activist who was a prominent voice in the successful campaign for a ban on natural gas fracking in New York.
When her gas boiler broke down (a rodent was involved), a local renewable-energy group, Solar Tomkins, helped her cut her tie to the gas line and shift to an electric air-source heat pump.
Sandra Steingraber's Twitter thread on transitioning from gas to electricity.
Here's the intro, with some Twitter shorthand expanded, but please read and share Steingraber's full thread:
So I have a little house, just under 1,200 square feet, built around 1905. This thread is about how I disconnected it from natural gas and installed an air-source heat pump that runs on electric. I had the help of this non-profit, which connects homeowners with contractors and financing.
Re: #ClimateCrisis, I remain firmly in the camp of political change over personal change, which makes me hesitant to even post about this because I believe my efforts to help win a statewide ban on #fracking and close a local coal plant matter more than ditching my boiler.
But I am putting two kids through college by myself, and when a rodent cremated itself inside my gas boiler last spring (yeah, likely a rat), I had a big decision to make about whether to fix it or replace it, so I thought this story might be relatable. #OneHouseAtaTime
Read the Twitter thread in easier form here.
It's a great articulation of what's possible, and I particularly appreciated how Steingraber overcame her hesitation to highlight individual action and recognized the value of both her policy activism and personal story sharing power.
Climate is the ultimate "and, and" problem, requiring political activism from those with that focus, technological innovation from others and communication always.
The fracking campaign in New York stopped local gas extraction and cut local environmental risk, but did not blunt the state's gas appetite, which has remained largely unchanged, according to the Energy Information Administration (this graph shows 1998 - 2020 total gas use).
Luckily the HeatSmart program of Solar Tomkins, the organization that helped propel Steingraber's energy shift, is not remotely alone. It is part of a networked Clean Heating and Cooling Communities Campaign tracked and fostered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
Propelling a clean-energy transformation, just like boosting and spreading resilience to climate hazards, requires action at every level.
Please post your local sources of expertise, technology and financing below.
Resources and reading
Pathways to Residential Deep Energy Reductions and Decarbonization - an invaluable report from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy on the importance of "deep retrofits" and the need for federal funding to support their spread.
Bringing Infrastructure Home - A 50-State Report on U.S. Home Electrification - an essential report from Rewiring America, which is also helping propel the Zero-Emission Home Act of 2021.
Electrify Everything in Your Home - a free downloadable guide from Rewiring America written by Joel Rosenberg.
Weatherizing homes could be one of the most vital legacies of Biden’s infrastructure plan - A Brookings Institution post by Joseph Kane and Tara Pelton
Building Decarbonization Coalition - "unites building industry stakeholders with energy providers, environmental organizations and local governments to power our nation's homes and workspaces with clean energy."
I learned about the Coalition through David Roberts's indispensable Volts podcast chat with Panama Bartholomy, who heads the organization. As Roberts describes, they talk "about the many technical, political, and financial challenges involved in decarbonizing tens of millions of American homes -- including, yes, ^$*! gas stoves."
Parting shot
Solar panels adjacent to the sewage treatment plant in Beacon, New York
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