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Time is running out for Americans to get a federally funded discount on energy upgrades that can lower their utility bills and make their homes healthier and more comfortable.
The GOP tax and spending law passed in July swiftly phases out tax credits that help households afford heat pumps and other energy-saving electric appliances. The credits were supposed to last about a decade; now they sunset Dec. 31.
To meet this use-it-or-lose-it moment, electrification advocacy nonprofit Rewiring America last week launched the Save on Better Appliances campaign. It’s a nationwide effort to help homeowners and renters lock in the incentives — the Energy-Efficient Home Improvement Credit (25C) and the Residential Clean Energy Credit (25D) — before they’re gone.
“Most people don’t think about this stuff every day,” said Ari Matusiak, CEO of Rewiring America. “We’re talking about five or six purchasing decisions that you make only several times over in your whole life. … So making sure people have the resources and information available about [this] technology that is better and can save them money, is really important.”
The tax credits enable households to save thousands of dollars on their federal taxes when they invest in energy-slashing home upgrades, including electrical panel retrofits, weatherization improvements, and installations of solar panels, heat pump heater/air conditioners, home batteries, and heat-pump water heaters.
Such measures are especially salient as households grapple with inflation, tariffs, and rapidly rising electricity costs. President Donald Trump promised to lower power bills, but experts expect his administration’s anti-renewables agenda will keep them climbing.
Efficiency upgrades also help put a dent in planet-warming pollution. More than 40% of U.S. energy-related emissions stem from how people heat, cool, and power their homes and fuel their cars, according to Rewiring America.
With the long lead time often needed to get quotes and book contractors, households realistically need to decide if they’re going to pursue clean energy projects in the next several weeks to get the federal discounts, Matusiak said.
Accordingly, the campaign, which runs until the end of October, is a full-court press of resources and tailored support. Rewiring America is also coordinating with elected officials, manufacturers, utilities, and grassroots groups on the effort. Among those partners is the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors, which last month committed to helping constituents take advantage of the tax credits.
“It’s really disheartening to see the federal government take away financial assistance from Americans at a time where they need it more than ever,” said Casey Katims, U.S. Climate Alliance executive director.
Rewiring America has set up a central hub where homeowners and renters can launch their electrification journey. The nonprofit’s Personal Electrification Planner allows users to estimate how much an upgrade is likely to cost up front and save them on their energy bills over time. Individuals can also search for independently vetted contractors and look up incentives with the nonprofit’s savings calculator, which lists federal as well as local rebates and tax credits in 29 states.
For people looking for more support, Rewiring America is holding weekly drop-in Zoom sessions with certified, trained “electric coaches.” They’re volunteers who can offer free, impartial guidance to help people troubleshoot the gnarly complexities of making energy-efficient home upgrades. The first session is on Wednesday, Sept. 3.
Rewiring America is also securing deep discounts on heat pumps for homeowners — in Rhode Island and Colorado, to start. The organization has teamed up with manufacturers and contractors to drive costs 20% to 30% below standard market pricing by pooling customers together — an approach national nonprofit Solar United Neighbors has used for years to get better deals on solar panels. A Rewiring America spokesperson declined to specify how many households have enrolled so far.
Rewiring America had longstanding relationships that made these two states particularly fertile testing grounds, Matusiak said. But if it succeeds, the organization plans to expand the group-purchasing initiative. In a few places, others are also leveraging collective market power, including installer Vayu in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles and Laminar Collective in the Boston metro area.
Overall, “the goal here is to create broad awareness for people to take advantage of incentives that are theirs to take,” Matusiak said. For individuals open to going electric, “we hope they access our resources — and do that right away.”
At the end of June, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law AB 130, a sweeping bill that aims to make it easier to build housing, reforms that many lawmakers and experts agree are long overdue given the state’s severe housing crisis.
But one provision could needlessly slow the state’s progress on its climate and clean energy goals, according to advocates. The law pauses updates to state and local building codes — the mandatory construction standards meant to ensure that new buildings are safe and energy efficient — for the next six years.
Buildings account for a quarter of California’s carbon pollution. And the state’s building standards, which are normally revised once every three years, have been a powerful decarbonization tool. The latest statewide energy code, already finalized, takes effect Jan. 1, 2026, and encourages developers to build all-electric homes with both heat pumps and heat-pump water heaters — super-efficient, zero-emissions appliances that are safer than gas-fired options. In addition to updating codes, California has eliminated subsidies for new gas lines.
These regulations are working; “California is an electrification-forward state,” said Sean Armstrong, managing principal of Redwood Energy, a design firm specializing in net-zero, all-electric affordable housing development. In 2023, 80% of line extension requests by builders to utilities Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric were electric-only, according to the California Energy Commission, the agency responsible for developing the building energy codes. The commission expects that the majority of new houses built under the latest code will be all-electric.
Now, though, the state will skip a scheduled 2028 residential code update, blocking it from pushing builders to go further to cut emissions. Starting Oct. 1 this year, the new law will also prevent local jurisdictions from updating their own, more ambitious building standards, known as reach codes.
These could include measures not yet enacted in the state rules, such as encouraging heat pumps for multifamily buildings, mandating all-electric renovations, and requiring that broken central air conditioners be replaced with heat pumps that can both warm and cool spaces. That last idea is an inexpensive way to decarbonize heating, according to Matt Vespa, senior attorney at nonprofit Earthjustice.
Seventy-four local governments in California have passed reach codes that encourage or require all-electric new construction. With the pause on updates looming, San Francisco is now racing to get an all-electric requirement for major renovations on the books before the Oct. 1 deadline.
AB 130 does allow for some exceptions that could let local governments implement stricter building requirements even after the cutoff date.
The law permits the state commission and local governments to update building codes in emergencies to protect health and safety. Perhaps the climate emergency will qualify, said Kelly Lyndon, cochair of the advocacy alliance San Diego Building Electrification Coalition.
Cities and counties can also adopt updates that are necessary to carry out greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies spelled out in their state-mandated general plans. These road maps must have been adopted by June 10, 2025, and code updates can’t ban gas.
“At least one of these exceptions is going to work for folks who want to make further progress on climate,” said Merrian Borgeson, director of California policy with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate & Energy Program. “Unfortunately … [AB 130] makes it more complicated and creates more red tape.”
Vespa pointed out that many jurisdictions may be able to take advantage of the exception for preexisting aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Among the 482 city plans, 409 mention “greenhouse gas” — an indicator that local leaders are pursuing emissions cuts. The phrase also shows up in 52 of 58 county general plans.
Sacramento’s general plan, for example, stresses “a continued focus on improving the performance of both new and existing buildings.” A local code update to swap old air conditioners with heat pumps could fit within AB 130’s exemption, Vespa said.
But it’s too soon to say who might try the strategy first. “Some jurisdictions are really looking towards their legal experts to interpret [the exception language],” said Madison Vander Klay, senior manager of government affairs at the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition.
But even with its exclusions, the moratorium “is a big problem for emissions, affordability, and cost savings,” Vander Klay said.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D) and Assemblyperson Nick Schultz (D), who authored the initial standalone bill to pause building codes, AB 306, championed the idea as a way to help solve California’s housing affordability crisis and spur rapid recovery after the wildfires that torched areas of Los Angeles County in January. That bill eventually got folded into AB 130.
“California home prices are double the national average, and the rent is too damn high. So many folks cannot afford to live in California,” Schultz said on the Assembly floor in April. “This pause … will provide stability and certainty in the housing construction market by temporarily freezing the standards by which people need to meet to construct their home.”
It’s unclear whether the bill will actually make homes more affordable, though. “Building codes have never been what drives high costs in California — certainly not the energy code,” Borgeson said.
A 2015 study conducted by the University of California LA for Pacific Gas & Electric backs that up; the authors noted that they couldn’t find a statistically significant relationship between California’s energy-efficiency code and home construction costs.
“There isn’t a lot of evidence that waiving codes helps affordability,” Vander Klay said. “The building codes overall are required [by law] to be cost-effective.” Any up-front costs must be outweighed by savings.
The standards have delivered, sparing Californians more than $100 billion in avoided energy costs over the last five decades, according to the Energy Commission. The code that takes effect next year is expected to net more than $4.8 billion in savings over 30 years.
Research also shows that building all-electric homes is typically faster and cheaper than building those with gas. A 2019 analysis by energy consultancy E3, for example, estimated that building a new all-electric home in most parts of California costs about $3,000 to $10,000 less than building a home that’s also equipped with gas. Similarly, a 2022 study by the New Buildings Institute found that constructing an all-electric single-family home in New York costs about $8,000 less than a home with gas. A UC Berkeley team used these and other findings to conclude in an April report that the most cost-effective way to rebuild after the LA fires is likely all-electric.
With the moratorium, the commission will have to skip the 2028 residential code cycle. That omission could result in tens of millions of dollars in lost utility bill savings for households, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition. Notably, the commission will be able to work on the following code update, so it can take effect as planned in 2032.
In the wake of AB 130, the Building Decarbonization Coalition’s Vander Klay is urging the Legislature to reauthorize California’s successful cap-and-trade program to support home electrification by making heat pumps and other decarbonizing tech more affordable. “There is still an opportunity … this year for the state to look at carving out funding to provide incentives,” she said.
In passing AB 130, state lawmakers took aim at rules that they contend stifle development. Underpinning this strategy is a notion popularized by a recent book, “Abundance.” Authors Ezra Klein of The New York Times and Derek Thompson, contributing writer at The Atlantic, make the case that well-intentioned but overly protective regulations can foster scarcity — in this case, of housing — and thus interfere with leaders’ ability to deliver on the promises of a better life.
But Vander Klay argues that lawmakers should view strong building codes as a way to help create abundance. “Abundance is this idea that we should all have access to housing, we should all be able to afford our energy bills … we should all be able to have access to clean air and clean water and healthy homes,” Vander Klay said.
Clean energy technologies like heat pumps are part of an abundant, safer, more climate-resilient future, she noted. “We have building codes as a tool to support building what we need safely and quickly and affordably.”
A surge of housing development in a Boston suburb is providing evidence that natural-gas bans and strict energy-efficiency standards do not slow new construction or make it more expensive. Indeed, these guidelines can even boost the growth of affordable housing, say local advocates.
In 2024, Lexington, Massachusetts, banned gas hookups in new construction and adopted a stringent building code that requires high energy-efficiency performance. Yet these regulations have not stopped the town of roughly 34,000 from permitting some 1,100 new units of housing — 160 of which will be affordable — over the past two years.
“Opponents said, ‘It’s going to cost so much, you’re going to stop the development of affordable housing.’ But that clearly wasn’t the case,” said Mark Sandeen, a member of the town select board and the board of the Lexington Affordable Housing Trust.
As Massachusetts aims to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the state has for several years prioritized policies that encourage the transition away from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, which heats about half of the state’s homes. In 2022, Massachusetts launched a pilot program allowing 10 communities — including Lexington — to prohibit the use of fossil fuels in new construction and major renovations. In late 2023, utilities regulators issued an order that makes explicit the state’s goal of getting off natural gas, and lays out strategies and principles for reaching this goal.
Detractors, however, have consistently argued that requiring or even heavily encouraging all-electric construction would make housing more costly and difficult to build at a time when Massachusetts is facing an acute housing shortage. In 2022, then-Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, memorably said the idea of fossil fuel bans gave him “agita,” so worried was he that such municipal regulations would suppress housing growth.
Similar battles have played out across the country, from California to New York.
There is plenty of evidence that electrified, highly efficient homes don’t need to come with a price premium.
A 2022 study by think tank RMI found that, in Boston, all-electric homes are slightly less expensive both to build and to operate than mixed-fuel homes — and that was before Massachusetts’ investor-owned utilities adopted lower wintertime rates for homes with heat pumps. In 2023, Massachusetts-based advocacy group Built Environment Plus found that building larger multifamily and affordable housing developments “net-zero ready” — that is, highly efficient and with all-electric heating — costs about 4% less up front than the conventional approach.
After Lexington changed its zoning rules in 2023 to allow more multifamily development, its energy regulations did not, as naysayers had feared, deter developers from taking advantage. The planning board has approved nine projects, ranging from a proposal to redevelop an unused commercial space into a seven-unit building, to a complex combining 312 residential units with 2,100 square feet of retail space.
The new construction will include both rental units and condos available to purchase that will, in total, increase available housing in town by 9%. Much of the new housing will be market-rate, and Lexington — where the median condo went for $915,000 in the first quarter of 2025 — is not an inexpensive place to live.
However, most of the construction driven by the new zoning is required to make 15% of its units affordable. On top of these private projects, the town has decided to develop a municipally owned property into a 40-unit affordable housing development, bringing the total number of affordable units on the horizon to about 200.
The municipal project will include four residential buildings designed to be energy-efficient and to minimize the square footage of halls and other common areas, which will reduce the cost of heating and cooling these spaces. Solar panels on the roofs will offset the electricity consumed by the building’s heat pumps, said Dave Traggorth, principal with Causeway Development, the company chosen to develop the property.
“Ultimately, what the tenant is paying for in their electric bill is really just cooking and lights,” he said. “It really reduces the utility bills for residents.”
All of these new projects — market-rate and affordable — will be prohibited from using fossil fuels to run furnaces or other appliances because of the town’s requirement that new construction be fully electric.
The town has also adopted an optional, more rigorous version of the state building code that requires new, multifamily projects over 12,000 square feet — which applies to most of those in the pipeline in Lexington — to build to passive house standards, which require a very well-sealed building envelope and dramatically reduced energy use compared to a conventionally built structures.
“This is what you can do at the local level,” said Lisa Cunningham, cofounder of climate advocacy organization ZeroCarbonMA.
While Lexington is a particularly active town, the other nine communities that have banned fossil fuels in new construction have all reported that the rules have posed no obstacle to development, Cunningham said. Restrictive zoning and antidevelopment sentiment among residents are much more pressing problems, she said.
For the eventual residents, the benefits go beyond the knowledge that their homes are helping cut emissions. Homes designed to passive house standards use far less energy than those that are conventionally built, creating ongoing savings for homeowners and tenants, and have been found to generally have better indoor air quality. When the power goes out, these well-sealed buildings can keep interior temperatures comfortable for days.
It is no accident that residential developers were ready to jump when opportunities opened up in a town with stringent efficiency and electrification rules. Massachusetts has been laying the groundwork for years, said Lauren Baumann, director of sustainability and climate initiatives for the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that works to expand affordable housing.
“There has been this deliberate effort to develop an ecosystem to support this kind of construction,” she said.
In 2019, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center awarded $1.73 million in grants to eight affordable, multifamily projects to help accelerate the adoption of passive house standards in multifamily construction by demonstrating that the approach makes financial sense. That same year, the state’s energy-efficiency program administrator, Mass Save, launched an initiative offering money to multifamily projects for feasibility studies, energy modeling, and analyses of post-construction energy performance.
These incentives gave architects and contractors a lower-risk way to become familiar with a new approach to building. And familiarity, in this case, bred knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm.
“Those early project pilots really did give people the experience they needed in order to feel comfortable,” Baumann said. “We just saw an explosion of interest.”
Traggorth has seen this evolution in his work. Five years ago, he said, if he approached a contractor to discuss building to passive house standards, he was often greeted with confusion. Now, “every contractor that’s building multifamily has a couple of projects that have been passive house certified,” he said. “They have learned their lessons.”
San Francisco already requires most new buildings to eschew gas and run solely on electricity. Now, the metropolis is moving to ensure that substantial renovations in existing buildings are also all-electric.
Last week, the city and county’s Board of Supervisors completed the first of two votes to pass the All-Electric Major Renovations Ordinance, a climate-forward building standard that will apply to commercial and residential structures. The initial 11–0 vote was a resounding sign of approval; the final hearing is likely to occur Sept. 2, according to the San Francisco Environment Department, the agency that developed the rules.
“We can’t build the San Francisco of the future with fuel from the past,” Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman said in a statement. “This legislation picks up where we left off with the All-Electric New Construction ordinance and affords us the opportunity to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in our existing buildings, improve indoor and outdoor air quality, and make San Francisco a safer, healthier, and more resilient place to live and work.”
The proposed ordinance was years in the making, but the city is now fast-tracking its approval before a new statewide pause on updates to building codes kicks in. Under the law, signed in June, San Francisco and other jurisdictions in the Golden State have only until Oct. 1 to adopt stronger building codes unless they claim an exception.
San Francisco can’t meet its climate goals unless it moves buildings away from fossil fuels. The city has vowed to slash carbon pollution by 61% from 1990 levels by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040 — five years faster than California as a whole. Buildings in San Francisco account for 44% of the city’s planet-warming pollution, the largest emitter after transportation, at 45%.
If enacted, the new ordinance will affect projects that are similar in scope to new construction, including additions as well as renovations that rip out mechanical systems. It won’t bear on single equipment replacements, however, like replacing a gas furnace.
The ordinance essentially “closes a loophole” in the new construction requirement, Cyndy Comerford, climate program manager at the SF Environment Department, told Canary Media. For example, on the same downtown parcel of a five-story brick building, a whopping 46-story glass edifice was recently added, she said. “That addition was allowed to have gas in it when it was a totally separate building.” The new ordinance would put a stop to similar cases in the future.
Lawmakers are leaving room for exceptions to the all-electric standard, including restaurants that use gas for cooking, buildings composed of 100% affordable housing units (with gradual compliance after July 2027), and projects that can’t get enough power from the utility in time. Building owners would seek exemptions from the SF Environment Department.
In many cases, the cost of all-electric construction is actually lower than that of mixed-fuel buildings, according to the department. Summarizing several analyses, it estimates that newly built or majorly renovated all-electric single-family homes are cheaper than conventional construction by more than $2 per square foot, on average.
Contrast that to the higher estimated costs to switch to all-electric appliances after construction. The department estimates such retrofits would cost San Francisco homeowners an added $2 to $4 per square foot.
And all-electric retrofits are coming.
In 2023, San Francisco Bay Area air regulators passed landmark rules to phase out the sale of gas-burning water heaters by 2027 and furnaces by 2029 for single-family homes. When old combustion appliances conk out after those dates, homeowners will need to foot the bill to replace them with zero-emissions units. The same will hold for multifamily building owners by 2031.
“Developers aren’t always incentivized to think [about] who’s going to be living in this property 10 or 15 years from now,” said Tyrone Jue, director of the SF Environment Department. “And that’s where government has to step in to say … ‘Yes, we want you to build housing, but we want you to do it smartly so that we don’t end up having to carry the financial burden down the road.’”
Fossil gas also carries heavy social costs. In addition to contributing to an increasing drumbeat of climate disasters, burning fossil fuels in home appliances releases a slew of pollutants, from carbon monoxide to nitrogen oxides, that concentrate indoors and spill outdoors. These by-products can lead to respiratory disorders, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. One in eight childhood asthma cases are linked to gas stoves. All-electric equipment doesn’t emit these compounds.
“As a city, we’re responsible for the well-being of our citizens,” Comerford said.
Gas lines are also a particular liability in the earthquake-prone region. Liquefaction of the earth can sever underground pipelines, which are more prone to damage than the city’s electrical system, Jue said. In a 2020 report, utility Pacific Gas & Electric estimated that after a 7.9 earthquake, it would take up to six months to restore gas services citywide; electricity could be brought back on line in two weeks.
The all-electric renovations ordinance comes as the federal government is rolling back environmental regulations and pushing for more fossil fuel use, not less. “This is a moment for cities like San Francisco to step up,” Jue said. “And this is San Francisco drawing a clear line, not waiting for permission from Washington to protect our people, our health, and the planet.”
Southern California can keep a landmark rule that’s meant to spur the electrification of certain boilers and water heaters across the smog-choked region.
Late last week, a federal court upheld the first-in-the-nation regulation, which will gradually eliminate emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from more than 1 million fossil-gas appliances in the South Coast Air Quality Management District that covers greater Los Angeles. It applies to light-industrial and commercial boilers, steam generators, and process heaters, as well as residential pool heaters and tankless water heaters.
Opponents of the rule, led by gas-appliance makers and building trade groups, had sued in December to invalidate the standards.
“This decision recognizes our air regulators’ long-established authority to adopt life-saving protections — and sends an undeniable signal to manufacturers and businesses that the future of California’s industrial sector is electric,” Candice Youngblood, an attorney for Earthjustice, which intervened to defend the rule in court, said in a July 21 statement.
The measure is ultimately expected to reduce pollution by 5.6 tons of NOx per day — the same as halving smog-forming emissions from cars in the region.
Advocates say the ruling could help to reenergize efforts around the country to replace fossil-fuel-burning equipment with electric heat pumps and other clean technologies in homes and commercial operations.
Such initiatives have stalled since April 2023, when a different federal court struck down Berkeley, California’s pioneering ban on gas hookups in new buildings. The court said the city’s gas ban was preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act and thus wasn’t valid. The groups suing to stop Southern California’s zero-emission boiler rules pointed to Berkeley to claim that the measure also conflicted with the federal energy-efficiency law.
On July 18, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found otherwise. The court clarified that the Berkeley ruling is “very narrow” in scope and applies to building codes that concern energy use. The measure in Southern California regulates only appliances’ emissions. Put another way, “It’s about what comes out of the appliance — not what goes in,” explained Nihal Shrinath, a staff attorney for the Sierra Club, which also intervened in the case.
Last week’s court ruling “is a really big deal,” both because it enables significant emissions reductions and it affirms that air-quality measures can withstand such legal challenges, he told Canary Media.
“We think there’s probably been less activity by air districts and local municipalities, in terms of advancing [zero-emission rules], because of the fear of litigation,” he said. The South Coast Air Quality Management District itself recently rejected a plan to curtail pollution from certain residential space and water heaters following an opposition campaign led by utility giant SoCalGas.
The California air district spans large portions of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. More than 17 million people live in the region, where high levels of NOx contribute to some of the worst health-harming smog pollution in the country.
In June 2024, regulators adopted the zero-emission rule for small boilers and large water heaters in homes and businesses as part of its decadeslong mission to meet federal air-quality standards.
Gas-burning appliances covered by the rule account for about 9% of all NOx emissions from stationary sources in the area. They include an estimated 710,000 residential pool heaters and 300,000 tankless water heaters, as well as 60,000 light-industrial and commercial boilers and water heaters at places such as dry cleaners, restaurants, warehouses, and hospitals.
While the measure doesn’t explicitly ban or require any specific technology, the most realistic way for anyone to comply is by replacing their gas-fired appliances with alternatives like ultra-efficient heat pumps or modern electric-resistance boilers.
The limits on NOx emissions are designed to ramp up over time, starting in 2026 for new small units installed in new buildings and extending to new high-temperature units installed in existing facilities in 2033. The drawn-out timeline is meant to allow small businesses and homeowners some flexibility as they phase out their current equipment. It also gives manufacturers of zero-emission technologies enough time to develop and scale up production to meet the new demand.
Critics of the measure, including dry cleaner associations and building contractors, have argued that switching out gas-burning equipment and upgrading buildings’ electrical systems would impose a “significant financial burden.” The air district has estimated that the transitioning to zero-emission equipment will cost companies and households about $49 million to $97 million per year — though the air district will provide rebates to help defray some of those expenses. Industrial heat pumps can also deliver lower operating costs than gas boilers because the electric tech is much more energy-efficient.
Regulators and environmental groups maintain that such rules are necessary both to improve public health within the district and to accelerate the market nationwide for emissions-free industrial equipment. Last week’s court ruling ensures such efforts can continue.
A home electrification and solar pilot program for lower-income Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard residents is cutting participants’ energy bills nearly 60% and is expected to inform Massachusetts’ ongoing efforts to bring renewable energy and energy efficiency to all households.
“What the commonwealth has to have available, if we’re going to even hope to achieve our climate goals, is that there have to be options for people at every income level,” said Maggie Downey, chief administrative officer of the Cape Light Compact, the organization that administered the pilot.
The program, known as the Cape and Vineyard Electrification Offering, gave solar panels to all 55 participating households and heat pumps to 45 of those, most at no cost and some with a low co-payment, depending on income levels. Twelve households also received batteries, and some got electric dryers and stoves, to transition the homes completely off fossil fuels. Installations began in January 2024, and the final one wrapped up in May 2025.
The results: The average household is saving some $150 per month on energy costs and reducing net electricity use by 59% by getting much of its needed power from the on-site solar panels, according to an analysis published by the consultancy Guidehouse at the end of last month. Perhaps unsurprisingly, participating residents are quite satisfied with these outcomes, giving the program an exceptionally good “net promoter score” of 71%.
“My costs are drastically lower,” said Judy Welch, a homeowner in the Cape Cod town of Chatham who was one of the first folks to sign on for the upgrades. “In the summer now, I don’t have any bills, and I have the air conditioning on the whole time.” Her winter energy bills have also dropped to nearly zero thanks to the solar-powered heat pumps; previously, Welch paid around $500 a month to run electric baseboard heating.
Massachusetts has long had strong incentives for renewable energy and been a leader in policies promoting energy efficiency. The state has had less success, however, in helping lower-income households realize the benefits of these measures. At the same time, Massachusetts residents — especially those who make less money — face some of the highest energy burdens in the country. On Cape Cod, households making less than one-third of the area median income spent an average of 27% of their income on energy as of 2023, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy. (An updated figure is unavailable because the federal tool that provided this data is no longer live.)
The Cape and Vineyard Electrification Offering was conceived of as a way to overcome the sometimes unmanageable up-front cost of efficiency and clean energy upgrades, and to amplify the impact of individual technologies by deploying them together. Solar panels would keep down the cost of operating heat pumps, and batteries would maximize the amount of zero-cost electricity available to each home.
“It’s all bundled for the participant in a way that makes sense and optimizes all these different systems and combines them through one program,” said Todd Olinsky-Paul, senior project director for the Clean Energy Group, a Vermont-based nonprofit that advocates for a just energy transition. “I haven’t seen that anywhere else.”
The pilot was designed and offered by the Cape Light Compact, a unique regional organization that negotiates electric supply prices and administers energy-efficiency programming for the 21 towns on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. The compact proposed versions of the pilot in 2018, 2020, and 2021, before the state gave it the go-ahead in 2023.
The version that was finally approved called for 100 homes to participate in the pilot. As the effort rolled out, however, planners realized how challenging it is to deploy a standard package to houses with a wide range of ages and conditions. In some cases, interested homeowners decided against participation when they realized they would have to pay more than they hoped or discovered their yards were too shaded to generate much solar power. Some who did participate needed mold remediation or roof replacements; others were unable to receive batteries because they didn’t have basements.
“There is really no single solution for these questions,” Downey said. “It is so site-specific and customer-specific.”
Ultimately, 55 homes enrolled, as the unanticipated roadblocks raised the expected cost of serving each participant. On average, the Cape Light Compact spent about $45,700 on each heat pump installation, $30,000 on each solar installation, and $33,000 on each battery system, according to preliminary calculations.
These figures raised some questions at a recent meeting of the compact’s governing board, at which the Guidehouse report was presented. Downey acknowledged the cost, but pointed out that the need to transition off fossil fuels is inevitable — and comes with a price tag.
“You cannot hide the expense of what we have in front of us to deal with,” she told the board.
The report offers suggestions for improving any future iterations of the initiative. Pilot participants were prohibited from enrolling their solar systems in the state’s net-metering offering, and therefore their compensation for excess energy sent back into the grid was between 5 cents and 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, rather than at least 25 cents per kilowatt-hour. The evaluation suggests that future programs should allow the use of net metering to improve financial benefits even further. The report also suggests improving coordination among the various installers involved to make the process run more smoothly for participants.
The Cape Light Compact will present the results at the August meeting of the state Energy-Efficiency Advisory Council, the group responsible for writing Massachusetts’ triennial energy-efficiency plan. From there, the council will decide how to use the information to guide future equity-focused electrification efforts and determine the appropriate amount of financial support for households at different income levels.
“The results show that there are savings, and that energy burdens are reduced by more than 50%, when you pair it all with solar,” Downey said. “If we want to have low- to moderate-income customers come with us, we need to have options — that’s all part of the conversation.”
Have you been sitting on the sidelines, waiting to decarbonize your home and commute?
It may be time to jump into action.
The “Big, Beautiful Bill” that President Donald Trump signed on July 4 sets early expiration dates for a slew of federal tax credits that have made it easier for millions of Americans to switch to clean and typically cheaper-to-run electric appliances and EVs, make efficiency upgrades to their homes, and put solar panels on their roofs. After the end of the year — and even sooner for EVs — none of those incentives will be available.
“We’re at a ‘use it or lose it’ point,” said Skip Wiltshire-Gordon, director of government affairs for policy strategy firm AnnDyl Policy Group. He’s encouraging people to start talking to contractors to figure out which upgrades make sense for them and to get on installers’ schedules.
Besides improving indoor air quality, switching to a heat pump lowers energy bills by hundreds of dollars for the majority of households, according to electrification nonprofit Rewiring America. Savings climb still higher by installing heat-pump water heaters and rooftop solar. These benefits are especially salient as utility bills rise nationwide, a trend that experts expect the new law to exacerbate.
In addition to the tax credits, households may also be able to access federal home-energy rebates, depending on their state; that Biden-era program was untouched by the new legislation.
Here’s a run-through of the federal incentives that are, for now, available to help you electrify your life.
The Energy-Efficient Home Improvement Credit (25C) can get you up to $2,000 off your federal taxes for a qualifying heat-pump heater/air conditioner or heat-pump water heater, and separately, up to $1,200 on other energy-efficient upgrades, including insulation and air-sealing materials, windows, and exterior doors. The credit will even help you pay for an energy audit to diagnose your home’s biggest upgrade opportunities. You can claim a total of $3,200 this year. Under previous law, the credit renewed annually, so before the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” you could claim it every year until 2033. No longer. Expires: Dec. 31.
The Residential Clean Energy Credit (25D) takes 30% of the cost of a clean energy installation off your federal tax bill, with the actual amount uncapped. What tech counts? Solar photovoltaic panels, solar water heaters, home battery storage, geothermal heat pumps, and even home wind turbines. Feel free to go wild; you can use the tax credit for multiple projects in the same year. Expires: Dec. 31.
The New Clean Vehicle Credit (30D) can get you $7,500 off your federal tax bill for a brand-new, qualifying EV model. However, your household must earn less than $300,000 for married couples filing jointly, or $150,000 for single filers. You can get the discount on-site when you make your purchase. Expires: Sept. 30.
The Used Clean Vehicle Credit (25E) can lop up to $4,000 off your federal tax bill for qualifying pre-owned EVs. The income maxima are half of those for 30D: $150,000 for married couples filing jointly and $75,000 for single filers. You can get the discount right at the dealership. Expires: Sept. 30.
The Commercial Clean Vehicle Credit (45W) of up to $7,500 can’t be claimed by consumers directly but still gives them a fiscal advantage. Auto dealers are able to take the federal tax credit themselves and pass on the savings to leasing customers. Called the EV “leasing loophole,” the credit can be used for vehicles that don’t meet the stringent requirements needed to claim 30D. Expires: Sept. 30.
The Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit (30C) delivers up to $1,000 off your federal tax bill to install qualified EV charging equipment if you live in an eligible area. Expires: June 30, 2026.
Here’s a summary table to easily look up what the tax credits cover:
The $8.8 billion federal Home Energy Rebates program is targeted to low- and moderate-income families (earning less than 150% of the area median income) and comes in two flavors.
The Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate (HEAR) program provides qualified households with up to $14,000 in discounts for a wide range of efficient electric appliances and enabling upgrades — see the table below for an overview. Up to 100% of costs are covered for households earning less than 80% of the area median income, and up to half of costs for those that make 80% to 150% of the area median income.
The Home Efficiency Rebate (HER) program, also known as HOMES, can provide up to $4,000 — or $8,000 for lower-income households — for whole-home efficiency projects that are modeled to reduce energy use by at least 35%. The rebates can be even larger for actually-measured savings. Unlike HEAR, all households are eligible.
States and territories administer their own instances of the programs, and details vary, including eligibility requirements. The programs are still coming online. So far, five states — Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — plus Washington, D.C., have rolled out both HEAR and HOMES programs, making incentives available to residents, according to the Atlas Buildings Hub. Another seven states have launched just the HEAR program.
So check with your state energy office if home energy rebates are available or will be soon and how to qualify. In some cases, they’re going fast.
Home upgrades can be a beast, and Dec. 31 makes for a tight deadline, so the sooner you start exploring your electrification moves, the better.
You could kick the journey off by diving into the archives of this column, scheduling a home energy audit, and playing with a couple free online planning tools. Rewiring America’s personalized electrification planner lets you put in information, like your address and current appliances, and estimates the up-front costs and energy-bill impacts of going electric. The Green Upgrade Calculator by energy think tank RMI allows you to examine the financial expenses and carbon emissions you could avoid by replacing conventional fossil-fuel equipment with more efficient electric upgrades.
Check with your utility for local incentives in addition to the federal ones. Always shop around for at least three contractor quotes. The EnergySage marketplace can help connect you to some vetted options. Also, look for installers who specialize in whole-home electrification and can recommend cost-effective, holistic approaches.
Finally, find friends who have already made electrifying upgrades and yearn to give you advice. Seek out groups like Go Electric Colorado, Electrify Oregon, and Go Electric DMV for D.C, Maryland, and Virginia, which provide resources and electric coaches brimming with enthusiasm. They’ll be there to help you even after the tax credits are long gone.
As you wrap your home in insulation, ditch fossil-fueled furnaces for heat pumps, and trade in your gas-guzzling car for an EV, let me know how it goes! What challenges are you running into? What have you learned that you wished you knew at the start? How does it feel to be a part of the clean energy revolution? Reach out to me at takemura@canarymedia.com; I’d love to hear your stories.
Canary Media’s “Electrified Life” column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals and business owners can do to shift to clean electric power.
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — At a grassy city park this spring, professional landscapers sauntered between vendor booths, asking questions about the shiny new wares laid out before them: battery-powered push mowers, leaf blowers, string trimmers, chainsaws, and more. Some hopped on new standing and riding mowers to give them a spin.
Noticeably absent throughout it all was the scent and the roar of gas-guzzling equipment; the tools were all electric.
At the event hosted by the nonprofits Regional Air Quality Council and the Colorado Public Interest Research Group Foundation, landscapers were scoping out battery-powered tools to prepare for statewide regulations that kicked in this month. The first-of-their-kind rules, adopted in 2024, restrict the use of landscaping equipment with small gasoline-powered engines on public property during the summer — the state’s high-ozone season.
As you might guess from just a whiff of the noxious fumes, gas-fueled lawn and garden equipment are extremely polluting. Their combustion engines are a hazard not only to a stable climate, but also human health.
In 2020, nationwide, these machines belched over 68,000 tons of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and 350,000 tons of volatile organic compounds, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, referencing data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Together, the chemicals form lung-searing ozone, a key component of smog linked to respiratory problems and even premature death. The amount of NOx emitted by fossil-fueled lawn equipment is equivalent to the annual emissions from about 30 million cars, or more than a tenth of those registered in the country.
After personal vehicles and oil and gas operations, the third-largest source of ozone-causing pollutants in Colorado’s Front Range region is lawn and garden equipment, said David Sabados, spokesperson for the Denver-based Regional Air Quality Council, the lead air-quality planning agency for the area. These machines don’t have catalytic converters, he pointed out, so “they have an oversized footprint on our air-pollution problem.”
The Front Range, which includes Denver and Boulder, frequently exceeds federal air-quality standards for ozone — but it’s not alone.
Cities, counties, and states around the country are also pursuing cleaner air and quieter neighborhoods by limiting the use of gas-fired landscaping equipment, incentivizing electric options, or both. California has had a zero-emissions (i.e., electric) standard for newly manufactured leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and other small off-road engines sold in the state since 2024. Montgomery County, Maryland, banned the use of gas-powered leaf vacuums and blowers, effective July 1. And New York is considering a bill to deliver a financial boost to commercial landscapers who switch to electric tools.
Colorado’s new rules, called Regulation 29, don’t affect individual homeowners, but instead require landscapers who work on federal, state, municipal, and public school properties to use zero-emissions handheld tools and push mowers from June 1 through Aug. 31.
To keep grooming these grounds, contracted companies are replacing their gas gear with electric options as it wears out, which can happen in as little as three years.
Some landscapers say the switch has broad customer appeal. Certain clients prefer electric tools because they work from home and don’t want combustion equipment disrupting their calls. Others prize the environmental benefits.
“The community we serve is very Earth-conscious,” said Ed Johnson, division manager for landscape company Outdoor Craftsmen, which has transitioned two of its six maintenance crews to predominantly electric models. “There’s definitely been a desire” among customers, many in Boulder County, for landscapers to act as good stewards, he said.
Johnson added that it’s strategic to ease into electrification now rather than scramble to overhaul operations when stricter regulations come down in the future. This winter, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission will weigh tighter restrictions on commercial landscapers working on private properties, The Denver Gazette recently reported.
Making the switch to electric equipment isn’t easy, though. Cost can be a barrier, a concern the industry raised when Regulation 29 passed last year.
“It’s a big investment for all the batteries,” said Brian Levins, manager at Designscapes Colorado, a landscape design, construction, and maintenance firm. “When you’re buying a battery, you’re basically prepaying gas for two years.” The company, which earned $45 million in revenue last year, has spent about $36,000 (after incentives) on handheld electric tools and charging gear for six of its 20 crews, he said.
Designscapes was able to take advantage of the 30% discount on electric lawn equipment that Colorado offers through participating retailers. Other landscaping firms have defrayed costs with grants from state and local agencies, such as Boulder County’s Partners for a Clean Environment program.
Another hurdle is figuring out how to keep the equipment charged.
Johnson has rigged up an equipment trailer with a portable power station from manufacturer Kress that can recharge batteries in as little as eight minutes. And Aurora, Colorado, landscaper Singing Hills has beefed up the electrical infrastructure at its home base to handle the added load from electrifying some of its equipment. That upgrade cost about $15,000, said Jake Leman, CEO of the 30-year-old company.
An added challenge to going electric is that gas versions are still more powerful for a couple types of equipment, like leaf blowers, Johnson of Outdoor Craftsmen said. But the electric tech “is coming along,” he noted. “It’s getting really, really close.”
Plus, electric landscaping equipment boasts a bevy of benefits. It’s safer for operators, who no longer have to breathe their tools’ fumes or go home with the stench clinging to their clothes. Leman has heard from some crew members that they enjoy being able to talk while operating an electric machine — uncomfortable to do over a firing engine — and they’ve praised the faster start up of electric tools compared with gas-powered options that require pulling a cord, he said.
The electric machines also require much less maintenance, Leman noted: “There’s not the filters and the belts and the fluids to change.” With savings on fuel and upkeep costs, Johnson estimated some of his larger equipment would pay back after 27 months of operation.
Some companies don’t have to deal with the challenging economics of replacing equipment. Jordan Champalou started his business, Electric Lawn Care, with primarily electric machines four years ago, when he was 19. “I enjoy not breathing in fumes all day,” he said.
He’s also able to save on energy costs and charge in between job sites using cheap renewable power from two solar panels he installed on the roof of the trailer in which he hauls his Stihl mowers, blowers, trimmers, and chainsaw. His leaf blowers are indeed less powerful than gas-fired versions, he said, but he’s found a solution: He slings two at once.
About a third of Champalou’s clients hire him because he uses electric tools, he said. “This year has been more than ever.”
Some commercial customers are now also breathing easier on landscaping days, says Levins of Designscapes. A few client buildings have ventilation systems that inhale air from close to the ground. With gas equipment, “we need to notify them before we go out there, because otherwise those fumes will get sucked into the air-intake [system] and distributed through the building,” he said.
Battery-powered zero-emissions tools don’t have that issue, Levins noted. “And those customers love that aspect of the electric equipment.”
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
In Richmond, California, Zenaida Gomez is ready to say goodbye to the gas stove in the apartment she has rented for over a decade. She has a hunch that the pollution it emits is exacerbating her 10-year-old son’s asthma attacks, and she has heard from public health experts and doctors who’ve said it probably is.
“I’ve learned that not only do we have contaminated air when we are outside in Richmond, but there’s contamination and toxins within our homes,” Gomez said in a recent phone call.
She started attending City Council meetings and organizing with her neighbors as a member of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Action, because, she said, “I wanted something different. I wanted something better.”
But ACCE Action’s goal isn’t simply to get rid of gas stoves. In a city where about one in four people — nearly double the national average — suffer from asthma due in large part to pollution from heavy industry, the group wants to shut off or “prune” the lines that send natural gas into homes in some neighborhoods. The phenomenon is called “neighborhood-scale decarbonization,” and it’s just getting off the ground in California.
Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility in the area, is on board with the idea. It has expressed a willingness to spend a portion of the money it would otherwise use to maintain gas lines to help electrify the homes in the neighborhood that will no longer use the gas.
David Sharples, county director at ACCE Action, says the group is looking at different neighborhoods that PG&E has identified as likely candidates. Once the group chooses an area, it plans to run a pilot project with the goal of electrifying all the appliances and adding solar panels and batteries for up to 80 homes.
“We’re looking at the Coronado, Iron Triangle, and Santa Fe neighborhoods, which are working-class, Black and brown neighborhoods where ACCE has been organizing for years,” Sharples said. “They all have old gas lines that need to be replaced, so it represents an opportunity to electrify.”
To understand the appeal of neighborhood-scale decarbonization, which is also sometimes called “zonal decarbonization,” it helps to be able to envision the vast network of gas pipelines that exist under most cities in the Western U.S. That network holds a potentially explosive gas, and it requires constant, expensive upkeep.
California has pledged to install 6 million heat pumps by 2030 as part of its larger effort to reach net-zero by 2045. And while a rule will begin going into effect in the Bay Area in 2027 requiring that broken water heaters and furnaces be replaced by electric appliances, a similar rule was just rejected in Southern California.
Experts say a large-scale effort just makes more sense than a piecemeal approach in many parts of the state. And as dramatic as it might sound to transition a whole block or neighborhood off gas at once, the approach may also cost less overall and make it easier to employ people fairly.
Neighborhood-scale decarbonization has also been popular with lawmakers. Last fall, the California Legislature voted to adopt SB 1221, a bill that will enable up to 30 neighborhood-scale projects of this type over the next five years.
The catch is that most residents in the neighborhoods must agree to the change. While the state’s obligation to serve currently requires 100% approval, SB 1221 will lower the threshold to 67% as the pilot projects start rolling out. Several groups have begun the work of educating communities about the benefits of the switch.
In Albany, a city of about 20,000 people north of Berkeley, Michelle Plouse, the city’s community development analyst, has spent the last few years working with PG&E to pilot one of the first neighborhood-scale projects in the state. Using the gas line mapping tool developed by the utility, Plouse and other city staff worked with the Albany City Council to identify 12 potential blocks. This spring, they narrowed it down to three.
The goal, Plouse said, is to find blocks that are easier to electrify while also focusing on lower-income parts of the city, where residents are less likely to be able to afford to electrify.
“What will happen if we don’t decommission the gas line is that the cost of maintaining it will continue to increase over time, and the user base will drop as people electrify,” said Plouse. “The folks who don’t have the money to electrify will be stuck on gas that will get more expensive every year.”
The City of Albany received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project, and they’ve used the funds to support an outreach plan that involves a block party, a focus group, and a team that goes door-to-door in hopes of talking to everyone on the three blocks. “It’s going to be a lot of listening and a lot of connecting with different people,” said Plouse.
Rachel Wittman, a senior strategic analyst at PG&E, said the utility provided a letter of commitment in support of Albany’s DOE grant, but it won’t be providing financial support for the project.
Although the California Public Utilities Commission is soliciting interest from communities that want to take part in the SB 1221 pilot program, a spokesperson for the commission said it won’t have a list of potential sites until the second half of 2026, at the soonest.
The Albany project will begin before then, so it won’t likely be considered one of the 30 pilots, and Plouse said they’re hoping to get 100% of the residents to sign on. “What’s most likely is that we continue serving as a kind of first test run that can provide information for those pilots,” she said. If that doesn’t work, they may decide to wait until they only need 67% resident approval.
“Albany’s learnings from their efforts in community outreach and advocacy during this project will provide valuable insights that can inform zonal electrification outreach strategy,” said Wittman. “This applies not just for SB 1221 and PG&E, but for any utility or community.” She said over three dozen cities, counties, and other energy providers have reached out to the utility with interest in zonal decarbonization.
ACCE Action and others in Richmond hope its neighborhood-scale project — dubbed Clean Energy and Healthy Homes — will be included in the list of pilot projects, and it appears to have a good chance at making the list. If they’re able to decommission a gas line there, Sharples estimates that it could cost as much as $15 million to upgrade and electrify homes spanning a few different neighborhoods and provide them with solar power. He hopes PG&E will cover around 10% of that cost.
The Richmond City Council approved the effort in early 2024, but the remaining funding is still in question. Chevron, whose local refinery has been a major polluter for more than a century, entered into a settlement with the city for $550 million over the next 10 years to avoid paying a per-barrel tax on the oil it produces. ACCE Action wants to see a portion of that money spent on the neighborhood-scale project. The group has been hosting community events and engaging community members like Gomez.
Tim Frank, a representative of the Building and Construction Trades Council in the county, wants to see the project move forward because it could also create a model for so-called high-road work in the home-electrification space. Currently, unionized workers tend to do larger electrification projects, while one-off residential projects are done by smaller companies not affiliated with unions. While some pay their workers well, many hire temporary laborers and keep wages low.
Electrifying all the homes on one block allows for the efficiency and stability associated with larger projects while benefiting individual families. It’s also more cost-efficient because it allows for bulk purchases of supplies.
It’s a worthwhile experiment, Frank said. “We’re engaged, partly because we see the huge promise of this strategy and we want to help prove out the model and scale it up,” he added.
For Gomez, who has been talking to her neighbors about the possibility that all their homes could be upgraded and electrified at once, the biggest barrier is convincing them that it’s not a scam. Richmond’s low-income communities have seen their share of companies that go door-to-door trying to extract money from people who are stretched thin and working multiple jobs. Some clean energy providers have turned out to be imposters.
“It’s something they’ve never heard of before. So, people ask: Is this a real thing? Can it actually happen?” And she tells them that yes, if the plan goes as a growing number of people hope it will, it just might.
This story was produced with support from the Climate Equity Reporting Project at Berkeley Journalism.
A first-of-its-kind pilot to electrify homes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard is set to finish construction in the coming weeks — and it could offer a blueprint for decarbonizing low- and moderate-income households in Massachusetts and beyond.
The Cape and Vineyard Electrification Offering is designed to be a turnkey program that makes it financially feasible and logistically approachable for households of all income levels to adopt solar panels, heat pumps, and batteries, and to realize the amplified benefits of using the resources together. These technologies slash emissions, reduce utility bills, and increase a home’s resilience during power outages, but are often only adopted by wealthier households due to their upfront cost.
“We are going to be advancing this as a model that should be emulated by other states across the country that are trying to achieve decarbonization goals,” said Todd Olinsky-Paul, senior project director for the Clean Energy Group, a nonprofit that produced a new report about the program.
In total, the program is providing free or heavily subsidized solar panels and heat pumps to 55 participating households, 12 of which also received batteries at no cost. Work should be completed on the final participating home this month.
“This is the first and only instance where solar and battery storage are being presented in combination with electrification and traditional efficiency,” Olinsky-Paul said. “Instead of having several siloed programs, it’s all being presented to the customer in a package, which makes everything work together better.”
It’s a strategy that program planners hope can help address the disproportionate energy burden felt by lower-income residents of the region, where households making less than one-third of the area median income spent an average of 27% of their income on energy as of 2023, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy. (The updated figure is unavailable because the federal tool that provided this data is no longer live.)
The initiative is a project of the Cape Light Compact, a unique regional organization that negotiates electric supply prices and administers energy-efficiency programming for the 21 towns on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. The compact first proposed the pilot in 2018, but regulators rejected the idea. The organization submitted a revised version in 2020 and 2021, but it wasn’t until 2023 that the state finally gave the program the green light.
An energy-efficiency contractor partners with each program participant to assess their home, then coordinates the necessary work, including any preparations that need to be completed before solar panels, heat pumps, or batteries can be put in. The batteries installed through the program are enrolled in ConnectedSolutions, a state program that pays battery owners who send power to the grid when needed. Because the pilot footed the bill for the batteries, these payments will go to the Cape Light Compact, rather than residents, to help defray the cost of the program.
Bringing the program to life was not always a smooth process. The original proposal called for 100 homes to participate in the pilot, but the final number fell well short of that target. Some homeowners who originally expressed interest were put off by the requirement to remove all fossil-fuel systems from their homes, particularly if they had recently invested in new gas or propane heating, said Stephen McCloskey, an analyst with the Cape Light Compact and the program manager for the pilot.
In some cases, homeowners balked at up-front costs. Moderate-income households that did not live in deed-restricted affordable housing had to pay 20% of the cost for heat pumps and any cost over $15,000 for solar panels. If a roof was too shady for solar, homeowners were responsible for removing trees and branches.
“At the end of the day, each customer and their decision-making process is different,” McCloskey said.
The original plan called for installing batteries in 25 participants’ homes, but unexpected limitations lowered that number, McCloskey said. Houses without basements, for example, couldn’t receive batteries. In some cases, the combined capacity of solar panels and a battery would have exceeded the local utility’s threshold for connecting a system to the grid.
The compact also had not fully accounted for the array of barriers that needed to be addressed before weatherization could be done. Some homes had mold or needed electrical upgrades. Others required roof work before solar panels could be installed.
These challenges are not dealbreakers but lessons learned for utilities or organizations that attempt to emulate the program in the future, McCloskey said. And Olinsky-Paul sees great potential for similar plans to be pursued nationwide. Nearly half of U.S. states have adopted 100% clean energy targets, he said, and distributed-energy programs like the Cape and Vineyard’s can make those goals more achievable by reducing the cost and strain electrification can create for the grid.
“If you’re going to do decarbonization, you have to do electrification,” Olinsky-Paul said. “And so there is going to be a huge need for some way of doing this without inadvertently causing massive new fossil-fuel use” to generate more power.
The Cape Light Compact intends to release a full report on the deployment of the pilot in August, but feedback so far has been very positive from participants who appreciate the turnkey approach to comprehensive electrification, McCloskey said.
“There are definitely things that whoever is facilitating that program would need to look at, to game plan for,” he said. “But this is a great model.”
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