City Support for Residential Carbon Goals

RMI’s Residential Energy+ team provides support and expertise to US cities looking to drive meaningful carbon reductions in the residential sector, while improving affordability, resilience, and quality of life for residents.

What Is Residential Energy+ City Support?

RMI's Residential Energy+ team is focused on advancing cities' carbon reduction goals by offering team support and expertise at no cost to cities interested in implementing any of four initiatives including net zero energy (ready) codes, efficiency standards for rentals, residential property assessed clean energy (PACE) implementation, and home energy data.

Why It Matters

RMI's work on America’s Pledge shows that U.S. cities and other subnational actors—which constitute over half of the national economy—are mobilizing behind goals under the Paris Agreement and leading on climate action. Energy use in the residential building sector accounts for about 20 percent of most cities’ greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore cannot be overlooked in any city-based plan to cut carbon while also improving communities and residents’ quality of life. However, achieving significant carbon reductions in the U.S. residential building stock has been a challenge to policymakers and the industry alike, due to the diversity of residential buildings, disaggregation of the industry, lack of energy performance transparency, and more. To solve these challenges head-on, Residential Energy+ was launched in 2015 to offer a market-based and collaborative approach to scaling home energy upgrades, capturing a roughly $144 billion market opportunity while also supporting environmental goals and helping millions of families.

What We’re Doing

We are working with partners and cohorts of cities to create working groups and provide technical support around these offerings, so that cities can learn from each other and work through problems together. Cities are leading in the U.S. fight against climate change and RMI will help first movers achieve their goals with approximately 400 hours of technical assistance. In addition, we are advancing thought leadership in the four key areas of city focus, to continue driving the industry forward.