Weatherization: The Little Climate Action that Could

New England is full of drafty houses. Regionally, almost a third of housing units were built before 1940, and more than half were built before the 1970’s, when the first building energy codes were adopted. Anyone who lives in such a house knows how uncomfortable it can be, on a February day, to feel the cold outside air seeping in through cracks around the windows and under the baseboard.

Less well-known is just how much these drafts contribute to the region’s greenhouse gas emissions. Acadia Center analysis shows that heating equipment in the draftiest houses can emit more than six times the CO2 of the same size house built to the current building code.

Not only is it possible to increase comfort and reduce energy bills in these drafty homes while also slashing emissions—it’s easy. Tens of thousands of New England homes undergo weatherization treatment through energy efficiency programs every year.

How does weatherization work?

Imagine poking holes in the bottom of a plastic cup and holding it under the tap. The larger the holes, the faster the water needs to come out of the tap to keep the cup full. Heating your home is like that: the cup is your house, the water is heat energy, the tap is your heating equipment, and the holes are—well, holes. Tiny cracks all around the house can let in cold air from the outside, while gaps in insulation allow heat to move faster through walls, ceilings, and floors. In the summer, heat and humidity can sneak in just as fast as they sneak out in the winter.

Weatherization is a way to slow the movement of heat by sealing up cracks and adding or improving insulation. Blocking the pathways that heat uses to escape your house means that heating and air conditioning equipment doesn’t need to work as hard, which saves money and avoids emissions.

Wait, I don’t see any cracks.

Like water, heat can move through spaces that are hard to spot. Window frames, door thresholds, fireplaces, switch plates, duct supply and return grilles, recessed light fixtures, attic hatches, and the joists that sit atop foundation walls are all common sites for air leakage. Homes settle over time, which unavoidably creates small cracks in all manner of locations.

Yikes! What can I do about that?

There’s an energy efficiency program in every Northeast state that will cover a big part of the cost of weatherization. These programs are designed to make it easier for homes and businesses to be more energy efficient, which benefits everyone. Weatherization work is often completely free for income-eligible households. Here is a list of programs by state:

State	Residential	Income-Eligible
Connecticut	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers
Maine	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers
Massachusetts	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers
New Hampshire	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers
New York	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers
Rhode Island	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers
Vermont	Weatherization • All Rebates	Income-Based Offers

 

Is there anything I can do myself?

Hiring a weatherization contractor will save you the most money, but some weatherization measures are easy enough for homeowners to do on their own. For example, V-seal weather stripping can be applied to the tracks of double-hung windows or sliding doors. Foam tubing on exterior door thresholds is also effective and easy to install. Caulking can be useful for larger gaps around baseboard molding and in the framing around windows and doors. Some caulking products dry clear, making the seal invisible. Others are white but can be painted.

Other types of air sealing projects are better completed by a professional. These include any work done on or near something hot—the vent for a furnace or clothes dryer, for example. Some projects are also just too onerous for building owners to do by themselves. While it may be technically possible to seal and insulate an entire attic as a DIY project, it is perhaps not advisable—for safety reasons, because of the effort involved, and because small mistakes can affect the success of the project.

Why would I insulate my attic?

While air sealing stops the movement of warm air through cracks, insulation stops the movement of heat through building components. Older homes very often have little or no insulation.

Heat moves slower through insulation because it’s full of air pockets—that’s why six inches of pink fiberglass insulates better than a brick wall four feet thick. Aside from fiberglass, contractors also commonly insulate with blown-in cellulose. Made from ground-up newspaper treated with a flame retardant, cellulose can often be inserted into wall cavities from the outside by temporarily removing a piece of siding, drilling a small hole, and then capping the hole when the insulating is complete.

Together, insulation and air sealing can improve the comfort of your home while cutting emissions. And because strong incentives are available no matter where in the Northeast you live, the work often pays itself off in bill savings in three years or less.

So this can save me money?

Weatherization is one of the best ways to save money on utility bills. For an older home, insulation and air sealing can reduce bills by more than 50% and emissions by 60% or more. If your heating bill in a cold winter month costs more than $250, look into weatherization.

PowerHouse and Building Electrification: Fact vs. Fiction

Nearly a third of greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast come from buildings, and most of these emissions result from burning fossil fuels on-site for space heating, water heating, and cooking. Electrifying these end uses with clean, efficient electric equipment—like air- and ground-source heat pumps—is a necessary part of any realistic state climate policy.

Yet the fossil fuel industry and its allies have invested heavily in sowing doubt about electrification. Acadia Center’s PowerHouse home energy simulator counters this misinformation with a detailed analysis of the real costs and benefits of eliminating fossil fuel use in homes.

Information Gaps

PowerHouse is designed to fill a gap in analysis and information available to the public, enabling Acadia Center and its partners to provide credible data to rebut arguments made by the opponents of electrification. The simulator evaluates residential energy needs using ACCA Manual J algorithms and ten years of hourly weather data for eight locations around the Northeast. This allows for an analysis of operating costs, peak demand impacts, demand management potential, and net emissions that is both detailed and state-specific, rather than relying on regional or national averages.

A key capability of the PowerHouse tool is to quantify the compounding benefits of delivering whole-home electrification and weatherization as a package for a variety of residential building types. Weatherization measures like insulation and air sealing can dramatically reduce both the up-front and operating costs of electrification for most homes. PowerHouse puts a dollar value on these savings.

PowerHouse counters common misconceptions about electrification, including:

• MYTH: Heat pumps cost too much! The simulator demonstrates that whole-home electrification and weatherization leads to an overall cost reduction, which can be even more substantial in the drafty, old homes where marginalized communities often live.
• MYTH: Electrification won’t actually reduce emissions! As the model clearly demonstrates, whole-home electrification can immediately reduce emissions by more than half—an impact that grows each year as the grid adds more renewable resources.
• MYTH: Electrification will blow up the grid! Peak demand impacts are an important factor, but concern about the grid is overblown due to unreasonably pessimistic expectations about heat pump performance.
• MYTH: Heat pumps don’t work in the cold! Currently available cold-climate heat pump models can meet a home’s full heating needs in temperatures well below zero. Thousands are installed in the Northeast every year.

Equity and Justice

Low- and moderate-income households, communities of color, and English-isolated households in the Northeast are more likely to live in older, less efficient housing units. They are also more likely to be renters with very little control over their energy use decisions. Extending the benefits of energy efficiency and electrification to these households will require a concerted and meaningful commitment of resources—something that can be understood perfectly well without a home energy model.

However, PowerHouse can help to make the case for investing in marginalized communities by demonstrating the energy burden that these households suffer. A drafty, old house or apartment can cost six times as much to heat in the winter than a new unit of the same size built to the current building code. Providing clear, accurate numbers about energy burden for state decision-makers and other stakeholders can help bring the issue home for people who might never have dealt with energy bills like this themselves.

Grid impacts

Electric grid impacts are a common area of concern when it comes to heat pumps. Understanding the relationship between equipment performance, weather, and the peaks and troughs of electric demand is critically important to the overall project of building electrification.

PowerHouse closely parses this relationship, accounting for building shell characteristics, heat pump capacity, and input power for each hour of the year—granularity that is not possible with existing home energy modeling software. In this way, it can help to develop strategies for achieving building electrification at scale, for both new construction and retrofits.

Acadia Center’s PowerHouse home energy simulator meets fossil fuel industry misinformation with clear, fact-based analysis that proves the benefits of building electrification. By arming Acadia Center and its partners with this fine-grained analytical capability, the models will give advocates an advantage over the army of consultants working with oil and gas companies to irresponsibly prolong the use of fossil fuels.

Opinion: Developing floating offshore wind can help protect Maine’s seafaring culture, marine environment

The $6 Billion Question: Reality-Checking Baker’s Claimed Cost of Extra Climate Protection

In the flurry of activity at the end of 2020, two landmark (though long-expected) climate visions were put forward by different branches of the Massachusetts government. One, offered by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and backed up by its comprehensive draft Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2030, called for the state to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the year 2030 by 45% compared to 1990 emissions. The other, a bill passed with overwhelming legislative support entitled “An Act creating a next-generation roadmap for Massachusetts climate policy”, called for a 50% reduction by 2030, instead of 45%, among many other positive provisions. On January 14^th, Governor Baker vetoed the bill. But with the arrival of the 2021 session, the legislature passed the same bill again on January 28^th, which the Governor must sign or veto by February 7^th (although the large majorities in both bodies’ initial vote mean the legislature could override any veto).

Acadia Center has already debunked other claims in the Governor’s first veto. In his explanatory letter, the Governor claimed unlocking that extra 5% of GHG savings (the difference between 45% and 50%) would come with an extravagant cost: $6 billion more, to be exact. That figure, and how the Governor’s Office arrived at it, has touched off a number of conversations within the legislature and environmental advocacy community, because there has been little information revealed about where it came from.

Despite this, one can still infer valuable information from the Administration’s estimates for 2030. To explore this further, it is important to distinguish between an annual and a cumulative value. If, by 2030, Massachusetts reduced its annual emissions by 50%, the state would be emitting about 4.7 million metric tons[1] of GHGs less, annually, than if it only achieved a 45% reduction. Assuming those two reduction pathways gradually diverge between 2020 and 2030, that means – with a little help from high-school geometry – that the cumulative difference would be around 20-25 million metric tons. This is the triangular “wedge” of GHGs shown in the chart below, and this wedge, according to the Administration, is what costs $6 billion extra.

Now consider two important charts, included below, taken from December’s Massachusetts 2050 Decarbonization Roadmap reports, which contain the technical analyses that underpin policies set forth in the Clean Energy and Climate Plan, or CECP. These two charts show cost and emission differences between the study’s “All Options” scenario, which by 2030 attains GHG reductions of 47% compared to 1990[2], and its “Reference” scenario, which attains reductions closer to 15%. Reading the charts, it appears the “All Options” scenario cumulatively avoids about 150 million metric tons of GHGs and costs roughly $4.75 billion more than “Reference” by the year 2030.

To phrase it another way, the Roadmap analysis suggests that the average cost to get from 15% to 47% (and avoid about 150 million metric tons of emissions by 2030) is about $32 per metric ton avoided. This figure is also in line with a recent Applied Economics Clinic paper that explicitly calculated carbon “abatement costs” for Massachusetts. But the Baker Administration, in their justification for a more restrained 2030 target, says that to go from 45% to 50% could cost almost ten times that amount: $240-$300 per metric ton[3]. It is no surprise that bigger emissions cuts cost more, and costs per ton escalate as the least expensive options are exhausted first. Here, increased costs could mean that some polluting cars and fossil-fueled heating equipment would be replaced before they completely wear out. But the vast difference between these numbers, both of which come out of the same Administration within a few weeks of one another, suggest that different math is being used to tackle the same question.

Figure 5 from the Economic and Health Impacts Report, showing annual costs for modeled scenarios versus the “Reference” scenario. The area below the brown “All Options” line shows the cumulative cost difference for that scenario to be approximately $4.75 billion between 2020 and 2030.

Figure 46 in the Energy Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Report, showing cumulative emissions for the “All Options” and “Reference” scenarios. By 2030, the accumulated difference between the two would be 150 million metric tons.

 

A recent Boston Globe article by David Abel sheds some light on the Administration’s math, focusing on what it would take to stretch beyond the 45% target. For example, the article cites members of the Administration who say the Commonwealth would need 450,000 additional electric vehicles (EVs), which alone would cost $2.4 billion. That would mean over $5 thousand per car in extra costs. But what about the lower fuel and maintenance costs that EV owners enjoy? Even Consumer Reports acknowledges that the total cost of ownership for EVs is less than a car running on gasoline. And what about the other benefits to the public from breathing cleaner air with almost half a million fewer fossil-powered cars on the road? It appears that the Baker Administration’s math may not be accounting for all the benefits in the same way that the Decarbonization Roadmap does.

To be clear, achieving either of these 2030 aspirations, whether 45% or 50%, would be a significant milestone in Massachusetts’ fight against climate change. All other things being equal, fewer total emissions are better than more, since what really matters is the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere. Acadia Center is a firm believer in evidence and data-backed policymaking, and the CECP is a tremendous accomplishment, founded on solid analysis. If the Baker Administration is going to use cost to explain why it opted for a less aggressive emissions target, Acadia Center simply feels that the same level of rigor should be brought to that decision as is seen in the Decarbonization Roadmap. Luckily, the bill containing the 50% goal is already back on the Governor’s desk. Acadia Center urges him to reevaluate his position – or at least base it on cost figures that are supported by evidence his own Administration has gathered.

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/massgovernor/50881414713/

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[1] This can be calculated from the annual GHG emissions inventory.

[2] This value lies in between 25% in 2020 and 90% in 2050, and Acadia Center understands that the “All Options” scenario follows this straight line emissions trajectory.

[3] This is Acadia Center’s estimate of the range of marginal abatement costs implied by the Baker Administration’s letter. It relies on approximate values estimated from charts and simple reasoning, since the complete information needed to perform the calculation has not been provided.

A shocker in the plan to finally update residential solar rates: no complaints

Connecticut is on the verge of changing one of the key financial underpinnings for residential solar electric systems, and, for the first time in more than a decade, it appears no one is complaining.

The change is in how solar owners are compensated for the excess power their systems produce at certain times. The rates for how that is calculated and structured will be altered, but in exchange, systems will be allowed more flexibility to accommodate future larger electricity needs.

Solar systems obviously don’t make any power at night – but during the day, they often make a lot more power than the house they’re sitting on needs. For the most part, that power is sold back to the grid.

How a homeowner is paid for the power it sends to the grid has been a flashpoint for years. The battle has been between the utilities and just about everyone else.

On Jan. 20, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority released a draft plan for a new way to handle that compensation. It is open for comment until Feb. 2. Unlike previous ideas floated over the last several years, it has elicited initial reactions that are a head-snapping 180 degrees from what all parties have come to expect.

….

Amy McLean, Connecticut director of the advocacy group Acadia Center said she was “pleasantly surprised. It will be a better part of the solution going forward.”

Read the full article in The CT Mirror here

Vehicle Emissions Reduction Program Set to Start in the Northeast

The transportation sector accounts for nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, so any effort to reduce emissions must include a focus on this sector. “Transportation pollution is becoming a growing crisis both because of its contribution to climate change but also because of the damaging health impacts it has on communities,” said Jordan Stutt, Carbon Programs Director at Acadia Center.

Read the full article in the AAA Northeast Magazine here

Lamont Remarks on Killingly Plant Raise Eyebrows of Green Energy Proponents

Remarks Gov. Ned Lamont made this week opposing a controversial plan to build a new 650 MW gas-fired plant in Killingly raised eyebrows, and questions about how to reconcile his words with recent approvals by state regulators of new gas infrastructure.

The Killingly plant, which was first proposed by Florida-based NTE Energy in 2016, has become a key rallying point in the ongoing effort to promote new sources of renewable energy for Connecticut and to scale back – and eventually eliminate – power plants that burn fossil fuels.

“I don’t want to build Killingly,” Lamont told environmental advocates assembled for the League of Conservation Voters annual Environmental Summit on Tuesday. “I’m not interested in building Killingly, and I’m not sure that the market will say that we need Killingly.”

….

“It’s a good sign that the administration is clearly sending a signal that further investment in gas infrastructure in Connecticut is not welcome, and it is antithetical to the interests of Connecticut residents and inconsistent with the long-term climate plan of the state,” said Deborah Donovan, senior policy director at Acadia Center, a nonprofit dedicated to “equitable clean energy solutions.”

Read the full article in The Connecticut Examiner here

Conservative group criticizes transportation climate plan

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island’s leading conservative advocacy group argues in a report released Tuesday that the costs of a regional program to cut transportation emissions would far outweigh the benefits.

The report released by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity comes a month after Gov. Gina Raimondo signed Rhode Island onto the Transportation and Climate Initiative, joining Massachusetts, Connecticut and the District of Columbia as founding members of a cap-and-invest program aimed at helping to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

The initiative has won broad support from environmental and public health groups who say that cutting pollution from the transportation sector, which is responsible for about 40% of all carbon emissions regionally, will have far-reaching impacts.

….

Hank Webster, Rhode Island director of the Acadia Center, which signed the letter of support for the initiative released on Tuesday, said the center’s report aims to deceive policymakers by focusing on the 2019 legislation.

“Ignoring climate change and the rapid shift away from fossil fuels won’t help Rhode Islanders, and neither will false information,” he said.

 

Read the full article in The Providence Journal here

Next Generation Energy Efficiency

The buildings in which we live and work are a main driver of energy use and play a key role in determining public health outcomes. Emissions from appliances and heating and cooling systems negatively impact indoor air quality, exposing residents, especially in poorly ventilated buildings, to toxic pollutants. In New England and New York, building heating, cooling, lighting, and operations are responsible for over a third of the overall emissions that contribute to climate change.

Energy efficiency, including services ranging from home insulation improvements to replacing appliances with more efficient alternatives, can improve comfort, reduce exposure to pollutants, and save consumers money. Energy efficiency is also the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and has played a major role in helping the Northeast lower carbon pollution.

The Northeast is a national leader in energy efficiency. Efficiency programs in the Northeast lead the nation in important criteria: the highest per capita investments in energy efficiency and the most ambitious energy savings goals. The regional grid operator in the six-state New England region relies on energy efficiency resources for over 14% of the power needs of the region – the highest in the country. Millions of homes and businesses have received efficiency services, which have reduced energy bills, avoided billions of dollars in higher cost energy resources, and improved public health.

Acadia Center is proud of the role it has played in advancing energy efficiency in the region and promoting the creation of stakeholder boards to guide efficiency programs, budgets and goals, but far more must be done to improve the efficiency of our homes and businesses and to ensure that all overburdened and underserved communities reap the full benefits of efficiency offerings.  Programs have not delivered services adequately across all income levels and communities. Many consumers face unequal access to benefits under existing efficiency programs, and underserved communities that face the worst impacts of climate change and poor housing quality have not been able to take full advantage of efficiency programs. Clean electric heating and whole house electrification must be priorities to support the acceleration of clean energy resources and the transition away from fossil fuels. There must be better alignment between state climate goals by reforming key energy efficiency policies, regulations, and stakeholder systems, and the region must continue to value energy efficiency as a core energy resource.

Acadia Center’s Next Generation Energy Efficiency initiative seeks to tackle these challenges through a new approach – one that focuses on energy savings as a core consumer and energy system resource, but is also centered around meeting climate, environmental justice, and electrification goals. It is an approach that recognizes the interrelatedness of these efforts, which can work in concert to bring Northeast communities the future of energy efficiency.

The four challenges the Next Generation Energy Efficiency will prioritize are 1) sub-standard housing quality, 2) climate mitigation, 3) clean heating and whole-house electrification, and 4) sustaining investments in efficiency as the leading energy resource option for utilities and the power grid.

Prioritize Housing Quality Improvements

Energy efficiency must be at the center of addressing the region’s old housing stock. Energy efficiency can improve thermal comfort, reduce exposure to toxins, and lower energy costs. To better serve vulnerable populations and environmental justice communities, existing benefit-cost methodologies, which determine how efficiency programs are implemented, must incorporate climate, equity, and health benefits from building retrofits. Acadia Center will work with environmental and consumer advocates, environmental justice leaders, business interests, and efficiency vendors to develop policy recommendations that identify reforms needed to fully account for all the health, safety, and equity benefits that energy efficiency improvements deliver.

Ensure Alignment with Climate Mitigation

Every kilowatt-hour of electricity that does not need to be produced because of energy efficiency means less dirty fossil fuel use. But energy efficiency programs can achieve even deeper emissions savings if they are refocused with a greater emphasis on climate mitigation. Acadia Center will press to:

• Update efficiency statutes and regulations, including the way programs are screened through benefit-cost tests, to emphasize reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in addition to energy savings.
• Make certain that public utilities commissions consider climate and health impacts when evaluating efficiency programs; and
• Ensure that laws, regulations, and planning processes support efforts to transition from fossil fuels to clean electrification.

Embrace Clean Heating and Whole-House Electrification

If deployed together, energy efficiency and electrification can deliver greater emissions reductions while improving indoor air quality. To better align efficiency programs and electrification, Acadia Center will push for incentives for clean heating and weatherization, as well as for changes in how efficiency programs are administered to ensure co-delivery of building upgrades that are currently delivered in silos. Acadia Center will publish state-specific reports on the value of electrification and flexible demand and will push states to include electrification retrofit pathways in their efficiency plans.

Sustain Investments in Efficiency as the Leading Energy Resource

Northeast states must expand efficiency investment levels and energy savings goals to ensure deeper savings and benefits for all. As one of the fundamental components of meeting state emissions targets, efficiency efforts must be sustained in states that are already leading and improved in states that are falling behind. Acadia Center will work to ensure that decision-makers in the Northeast recognize the value and necessity of efficiency to spur large savings in public health and economic benefits. Through membership on efficiency boards and through PUC intervention related to efficiency plans, Acadia Center will continue to advocate for increased budgets and the maximum possible savings goals, provide expert commentary on state energy issues, and offer data and recommendations to counter bad decisions.

For more information:

Oliver Tully, Policy Strategist, otully@acadiacenter.org, (860) 246-7121, ext. 202

 

 

As lawmakers plan to send a new climate bill to the governor, state officials and lawmakers wrangle over the true costs

When Governor Charlie Baker this month vetoed a landmark bill to address climate change, he told lawmakers that his controversial decision was motivated in part by the legislation’s requirement that the state reduce emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels by the end of the decade.

That target was only slightly more ambitious than a plan his administration released only a few days before, which sought to cut emissions by 45 percent over the same period. But that difference, he said, would cost the state a whopping $6 billion more.

….

Deborah Donovan, a senior policy advocate at the Acadia Center in Boston, said less pollution would result in fewer sick days, and retrofitting buildings would likely produce more jobs.

“It’s important to look at the full range of costs and benefits when setting our goals and creating a suite of policies that will get us there,” she said.

 

Read more from the Boston Globe here