Electrifying Communities Across the United States

Alexandra Liu says that when the temperature is 80°F outside, it can be 100°F or more in her Skyway, Washington, home. “With the cooking and everything, with the sun shining on us on the west side, with the climate getting hotter each year, it’s unbearable. And there’s nowhere to hide, except to do an upgrade.”

And that’s exactly what they did with the help of King County, Washington’s Energize! Heat Pump Program. Liu and her husband David Tam replaced their oil furnace with an electric heat pump. It not only cools their house in the extreme heat, but it also keeps them warm in the winter, saves them money, and provides a clean electric alternative to an outdated system that was polluting the air and adding to the climate problem.

King County was part of RMI’s Electrify cohort, which helped 12 teams from across the country — representing 20 local governments and their 30 partner organizations — develop and launch programs to help their community members electrify their homes, focusing on heat pumps. Beginning in 2022, these teams from the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, and the East Coast attended monthly workshops where they could learn best practices from existing programs and each other in order to launch successful home electrification campaigns.

“We tried to provide the teams with a lot of different electrification program pieces that otherwise all of those municipalities would have had to create on their own,” explains RMI Manager Michael Gartman, who helped run the cohorts. “Sustainability department workers typically know what they want to do but in many cases don’t have enough staffing and resources to make it all happen themselves. Giving those folks a clear process to follow with tools, templates, and a community to share ideas with and ask questions is what RMI has provided.”

The first year of the cohort program focused on design of the respective programs, and the second year focused on implementing the programs in their communities. Throughout the process, the teams learned from experts and each other how to actually run successful heat pump programs. “A lot of these programs were the first of their kind,” says Ryan Shea, RMI manager and one of the leaders of the cohort. “One of the most effective parts was just proving the key pieces that are needed in a successful program for other cities to learn from it.”

King County, Washington, ensures the program benefits all

The goal of King County’s Energize! Heat Pump program was to install 120 to 150 heat pumps in income-qualified homes, and they are well on their way. Fifty-five heat pumps have been installed so far, 19 households are scheduling installs, and another 15 are in various stages of the program or with other programs that the Energize! Program referred them to. The program covers 100 percent of a heat pump installation cost for low-income residents and 80 percent of the cost for moderate-income residents.

Liu’s home of Skyway is in an unincorporated area just south of Seattle with a majority of low-income residents. The Energize! Heat Pump program reached out to residents in Skyway and other low-income communities around Seattle in multiple ways. “Whenever we did a postcard mailing, whenever we did a flyer, we thought about how we can reach people who don’t speak English at home,” says Nicole Sanders, building decarbonization program manager for King County. “Also, how do we provide support around a topic that can be personal and private, as it’s your home, and that’s also technically complex?”

King County held workshops with translation offered in seven languages (English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Cantonese, Khmer, and Somali). Sanders believes the workshops with residents were key to the success of the program. “I talked to people whose heating system hadn’t worked for years, that never had a heating system, that didn’t have electricity turned on. We talked with a lot of people who were struggling in different ways we hadn’t heard about. It really reaffirmed the customer management hands-on approach,” Sanders says.

King County originally ran the program on a first-come, first-served basis. But they soon realized that the people with more resources can complete applications and get things submitted sooner. So they changed to an approach in which they score the applications and prioritize certain criteria. And this is where working with a local community-based organization, the White Center Community Development Association (WCCDA), which interacts more directly with community members on a daily basis, was critical. “Working with WCCDA was really helpful because they alerted us to adjacent issues and other factors we hadn’t thought of,” explains Sanders. “For example, we had to account for larger households with multigenerational families, gentrification issues, housing affordability. Having those insights made our program much more responsive to the community.”

Regional collaboration in Minnesota

Another thing cohort teams stressed was the importance of collaboration, which was key to the success of the Electrify Everything program run by Minnesota’s Center for Energy and Environment (CEE). The program is helping households in the Minneapolis area replace their  gas equipment and appliances with electrically powered options such as heat pumps, even in this extremely cold climate.

The program was a regional collaboration between Minneapolis and three nearby cities — Eden Prairie, Edina, and St. Louis Park. Matthew Douglas-May, CEE assistant community program manager, says his team joined the RMI cohort because they were noticing gaps in services around electrification in their communities. “Even households that were interested in electrifying were hitting barriers,” he says. CEE now has an Electrify Everything help desk with advisors who inform on rebate eligibility and provide referrals to contractors. They also host workshops and hold informational tabling events throughout the region.

Douglas-May says that CEE had the technical knowledge and education ready to go. But he explained that the input from the city partners was invaluable. “The city partners funded the program and were critical in spreading the word, getting people to come to workshops, and shaping the program in a way that was relevant and helpful to their residents,” he says. “We couldn’t have done it without them.”

CEE’s Electrify Everything program also collaborated with home contractors, providing them training on how to talk about heat pumps and other electric appliances with residents. “The partnerships with contractors have been really valuable,” says Douglas-May. “Building these relationships is how we get this equipment in homes.”

It worked for homeowner Chris Martin who installed an air source heat pump, a heat pump water heater, more insulation, and solar panels in his Minneapolis home. Martin says that his utility bills went from about $160 a month to $100–$110 a month. It’s a great example that heat pumps can even work in extremely cold climates. “The heat pump provides heating to the home until it reaches zero degrees [F] outside, then it switches over to the back-up electric resistance heat. The whole system keeps us comfortable,” Martin says.

Community outreach is key in Ann Arbor, Michigan

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a cohort team launched a full-scale A2ZERO Home Energy Advisor program this past May, following a successful pilot program in 2023. The program provides energy assessments on homes and provides homeowners with a path to electrify their homes and get to zero carbon emissions. The program is building on the 20 homes helped during the pilot phase and currently has 350 applications.

One of the key challenges, according to Julie Roth, the energy manager in the office of sustainability and innovations at the city of Ann Arbor, was tailoring the information to make it understandable and usable for residents. “Electrifying homes is complicated, and heat pumps are complicated, so it took a lot of iterating to come up with a deliverable and a process that made it both digestible for a person, but not so superficial that it wasn’t useful.”

The Ann Arbor program placed a lot of importance on community outreach. “One of the very first things we did was go to the community, and we started doing community events and workshops because you can’t just be in an office trying to decarbonize your city,” says Roth. “It doesn’t work like that.”

The city also has more than 160 “Community Collaborator Organizations” consisting of nonprofits, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, schools, and other well-trusted groups in their communities. These organizations meet quarterly, hold events, and have a monthly newsletter. Roth explains that the concept of the Community Collaborator Organizations “is a way for us to align with those organizations on common and overlapping goals around community and sustainability. We’re leaning into the relationships that we have already built with these organizations to help us reach more of our community via trusted partnerships. It’s part of trust-building and engagement that forms the foundation for success in all the other work we do.”

Dakota Korth and his wife are first time homeowners in Ann Arbor and wanted to make their 1940s bungalow more efficient. Korth, a trade commissioner at Global Affairs Canada focusing on clean tech, was interested in heat pumps and weatherization, but says, “It’s hard for the layperson to assess what makes sense in your exact situation.” So the Korths signed up for the Home Energy Advisor program after hearing about it in a newsletter from the City. Korth found it extremely helpful. “Having an expert come through and spend a half day in the house, listen to our concerns, and give us his advice was really useful,” he says. The energy advisor told the Korths they were good candidates for an air source heat pump, so the couple is hoping to switch out their gas furnace when it needs to be replaced or repaired. “I feel like we got good information to act on and some additional clarity,” Korth says of the Energy Advisor program. “It was an incredibly positive experience.”

RMI’s Electrify Cohort — A melting pot of ideas

One thing that all 12 teams in the cohort agreed on was the importance of the relationships that were built during the two years of the program. Julie Roth had been trying to develop the energy advisor program when the RMI cohort came up. “The cohort really helped me move my ideas into action, to operationalize it instead of just spinning around thinking about it,” she says. “Learning about what other folks are working on made me feel less isolated and like Ann Arbor was just doing it all on our own.”

Douglas May of Minnesota agrees, and feels he learned a lot from his fellow Midwesterner. “The peer learning was huge. Seeing what other cities were doing was super helpful. Ann Arbor comes to mind, they’re kind of like Midwest rockstars,” he exclaimed.

“Just knowing you weren’t alone was huge,” says King County’s Sanders. Her team reached out to people in Michigan and Maryland, and even brought a California program over to King County. “Having this melting pot of programs and ideas was really helpful,” Sanders says. “As we were trying to create our own program, we could reach in and figure out what was useful and emulate it, and then talk to other people around the process.”

The RMI team has a guidance report to help other cities and jurisdictions run their own electrify programs. The guide highlights the success stories from the 12 groups in the cohort. “How communities engage on home electrification and heat pumps can look very different from place to place depending on the resources you have, your utility rates, and what the weather is in your area, but it is possible and there are a lot of examples out there than can lead the way,” says RMI’s Gartman. “This work can continue to yield impacts beyond the cities we worked directly with.”