3 ways to speed up home efficiency and electrification upgrades

Canary Media’s Electrified Life column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. Canary thanks EnergySage for its support of the column.

Electrifying your home can be a struggle, especially if local contractors prove resistant.

Three years ago, Carla Walker-Miller found herself in this exact situation. When she told her ​“boiler guy,” whom she’s worked with for three decades, that she wanted a heat pump, a superefficient heater and air conditioner, he said, “‘Oh, no, no, no — wait five years before you install one in your home,’” Walker-Miller recounts. He didn’t believe the technology was ready for their cold climate in Detroit, even though heat pumps have a proven track record of displacing fossil-fueled heating in places as cold as Maine.

The episode dripped in irony because Walker-Miller, an energy-efficiency contractor, is well versed in the advantages of heat pumps and other tech that help consumers reduce their energy bills and fight climate change.

Electrifying a home has the potential for massive impact; switching to a heat pump alone can reduce emissions by more than 2.5 metric tons of CO2, the equivalent of not driving for half a year. And more money than ever is available to electrify our lives. But as Walker-Miller’s interaction shows, home electrification still has a long way to go to become mainstream, both among contractors and the general public.

Walker-Miller has a rare vantage point into how the home energy landscape is changing. She’s the founder and CEO of one of the largest African American– and woman-owned energy-efficiency businesses in the country, Walker-Miller Energy Services. The roughly 250-person, Detroit-based company, which operates in Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, is an ​“implementation contractor” hired by local governments, community organizations, and utilities to design and deploy programs to achieve their energy-savings and decarbonization goals.

The 23-year-old certified B Corporation doesn’t install heat pumps itself; rather, among other activities, the firm conducts consumer outreach, workforce training, and home energy audits, which are checkups that give households tailored plans for making their homes more efficient and electric. It then directs them to contractors who can do the work.

I recently caught up with Walker-Miller to find out what she sees as the biggest bottlenecks to widespread home electrification. She articulated the problems facing the transition, as well as the solutions that could help more people, including contractors, get on board with electric appliances like heat pumps — and ultimately bring all homes into the clean energy future. Here are the top three takeaways.

1. Educate consumers about electrification and efficiency

The biggest bottleneck to widespread adoption of climate-friendly home upgrades is awareness, Walker-Miller told me. ​“A lot of people have never heard of home electrification or home decarbonization. It’s not a topic that … you and your girlfriends talk about.” (Electrified Life readers, you may be the exception.)

To help bridge the energy-knowledge gap and get households to sign up for government and utility programs, Walker-Miller’s company does a Herculean amount of outreach. The firm makes tens of thousands of calls and attends hundreds of events per year. It partners with trusted community-based organizations, and staff speak to people at festivals, fairs, sororities, churches, boat shows, food banks — really, any large community gathering.

That outreach is largely done in marginalized communities. ​“So much of what we do is introduce Black and Brown people into not just knowledge of clean energy but the benefits of clean energy,” Walker-Miller says.

Walker-Miller’s company makes the case to consumers that electrification and efficiency upgrades can save a household thousands of dollars over the years as well as deliver health benefits. Many households aren’t aware that appliances that burn fossil fuels, especially stoves, pollute indoor air and are linked to more asthma attacks in children, Walker-Miller points out. ​“How much would you pay for your family to be more healthy?” she says. ​“How much would you pay for your child not to suffer?”

That message resonates with families, Walker-Miller says. ​“We have to, in this country and in this world, get past looking just at dollars for the return on investment.”

Growing consumer awareness of home electrification’s advantages will spur more contractors to take it seriously, Walker-Miller says. ​“Contractors are going to respond to the demand. So the more people who are interested, the more contractors are going to make sure they can install this technology.”

2. Coordinate funding for pre-efficiency and pre-electrification repairs 

Homes that would benefit most from electrification and efficiency upgrades are often the most in need of pre-efficiency repairs, according to Walker-Miller.

When maintenance and safety issues prevent a home from qualifying for an efficiency program, the home is classified as a ​“deferral.” State-level community action agencies have reported that 15 to 60 percent of homes assessed get deferred. In the Detroit area, the rate has historically been 75 percent of homes, says Walker-Miller, citing a 2019 figure from Michigan’s Weatherization Assistance Program.

“If you haven’t taken care of mold, asbestos, and lead, we can’t do the upgrades,” Walker-Miller says. Other common issues are holes in the roof and obsolete knob-and-tube electrical wiring. ​“So what we do is we refer people to the city and to other entities that have money” for these repairs, such as utility and state-funded programs, she explains. Although funding to address deferrals has been growing, she says, much more is still needed.

In addition, the home-repair landscape is fragmented and needs to come up with better ways to take homes from a state of disrepair to being ready for clean-energy upgrades, according to Walker-Miller. One program might address only lead; another, only asbestos. Ideally, households would be guided through relevant programs until their homes are fit for efficiency upgrades like insulation and heat-pump water heaters.

A standout example of an effort to create more coordination among repair programs is Detroit’s Citywide Home Repair Task Force, Walker-Miller says. The group facilitates collaboration between the 40 (or more) home-repair programs offered in the city.

3. Get more contractors trained in energy efficiency and electrification

“There is absolutely a dearth of contractors available to do electrification with the required skill, and energy auditors and building science experts who can do a good job in guiding families to make the right decisions in [home-energy] investments,” Walker-Miller says.

Her company is working on closing this gap with an emphasis on equity. Its Diverse Contractor Incubator program helps contractors who identify as minorities, women, veterans, LGBTQIA+, or disabled grow their businesses into the clean energy economy. The program has had more than 250 graduates.

Diverse contractors are more likely to serve diverse households, Walker-Miller says. ​“We need to build our own tribe of contractors working in our communities.”

Through the incubator program, contractors delve into everything from business planning and licensing to new growth opportunities, including local and federal incentive programs. One of the most anticipated is $8.8 billion in forthcoming consumer home-energy rebates from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Walker-Miller Energy Services also trains people in building science, including the skills needed to become home energy auditors. Walker-Miller says the U.S. needs tens of thousands more such professionals. In Michigan and Illinois, the company holds these workforce development trainings, which typically last six to eight weeks, for both novices and those in the industry looking to level up their skills.

The training programs are often funded by utilities and are designed to be as accessible as possible. They come with a daily hot meal, funding for family care, and pay for participants; for example, one program offers $16 per hour with a $2-per-hour bonus for completing the training. ​“If we’re really interested in having a diverse clean energy industry, then paid training is really important,” Walker-Miller says. ​“There are people who can’t quit a low-paying job for six weeks.”

Since 2019, 117 people have gone through the training programs, with more than 90 hired into full-time jobs afterward with an average starting salary of $22 per hour.

“This is my calling,” program graduate Alijah Thomas recently told Evergreen Action. ​“My job is … to see how we can make these homes for these customers more energy efficient. We’ll help [them] save money on the utility bill and continue to provide comfort for them.”

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