This report examines how budget-constrained households balance spending on air conditioning versus other essentials like food and clothing during hot weather. Using banking data from Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, it finds that low-income households often cope with high electricity bills by reducing air conditioning use and enduring more heat. The findings aim to help policymakers identify strategies to better support these households and improve their welfare amid rising temperatures.

Electrifying heating systems with air-to-air heat pumps is crucial for achieving global greenhouse gas targets. This report uses simulations of 550,000 U.S. households to evaluate the costs and benefits of various heat pump performance levels and insulation upgrades. The analysis highlights the potential for significant emissions reductions and identifies the importance of efficiency and insulation in optimizing cost-effectiveness. It also suggests that supportive incentives and policies may be necessary to address affordability challenges and promote widespread adoption.

Large multifamily buildings with central heating systems that burn fossil fuels are among the hardest to decarbonize, but new systems such as window-mounted heat pumps, central air-to-water heat pumps, and “mono-block” mini heat pumps provide new options for decarbonizing these buildings. This report finds that window heat pumps generally have the lowest life-cycle capital and energy costs compared to various decarbonization options. 

Salem Heights Apartments, an affordable multifamily property in Massachusetts, recently underwent a deep energy retrofit to achieve passive house performance. This case study highlights the retrofit design strategies that enable 60% energy use reduction and show the integrated benefit of efficiency improvements, electrification, and solar. Specific strategies are described for the building envelope, exterior insulation, HVAC, and solar energy.

Over half of California’s 3.2 million multifamily units were constructed before energy efficiency standards, resulting in poor performance and high greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve California’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, affordable multifamily housing must improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and lower tenant utility bills while enhancing quality of life. Yet building owners face many challenges to improving the performance of their buildings. This report covers the role certain types of energy service agreements, combined with federal incentives, can play in scaling affordable multifamily retrofits.

Geothermal heat pumps offer highly efficient heating and cooling without fossil fuels. They are especially valuable in supplying heating on extremely cold days and support heating electrification with only modest impacts on electric grids. These heat pumps are widely applicable from single family homes to large properties, or even networked systems providing heating and cooling to entire neighborhoods. The blog article highlights the characteristics of this technology and new opportunities for greater adoption.

This blog post summarizes a larger study on an equitable energy transition based on the actions of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a small Midwestern city. The goal was to balance decarbonization and climate goals, ensure equity, and operate within budgets.

This case study illustrates how Mercy Housing replaced inefficient, in-unit heating equipment in its Monsignor Lyne property with heat pumps, adding air conditioning to resident units in the process, which allows residents to enjoy year-round comfort. This case study also describes how Mercy Housing electrified its domestic hot water heating system and provides cost savings information, stemming from the retrofit, for both owners and residents.

This case study outlines the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative (AHC)'s planned low carbon retrofit project at "The Towers," two 20-story buildings with a total of 316 affordable apartments. The retrofit focuses on upgrading the heating and cooling infrastructure by introducing cutting-edge solutions, including wastewater heat recovery and geothermal systems.

Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) created a series of fact sheets tailored toward residents that explains different building upgrades and their benefits. Each fact sheet includes the types of measures to expect and energy efficiency upgrades that should result from the retrofit. The categories of upgrades are building shell; domestic hot water (DHW); heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC); lighting, and renewable energy.