Enabling a Customer-Centric Approach to Scaling Integrated Demand-Side Management Retrofits, Achieving Zero-Carbon Retrofits in Existing Low-Income Multifamily Housing

This research was initiated to more fully understand how to implement deep energy efficiency in existing affordable housing while overcoming barriers such as customer discomfort, incon-venience, and asbestos mitigation that bedevil energy efficiency projects in homes. California’s Senate Bill 350, Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015 (de León, Chapter 547, Statutes of 2015), requires the state to double statewide energy efficiency savings in electricity and natural gas end uses by 2030 and is helping the policy side achieve a zero-carbon built environment (CEC n.d.). As part of this effort, the team focused on answering the following questions:

• What are the barriers to comprehensive retrofits for decarbonization in multifamily housing?
• What are the key emerging efficient retrofit package technologies? What data were collected and are important for data analytics? What are the data analytics results? Which technology worked and why?
• What are the customer economics, perceived benefit, and noneconomic benefits of decarbonization?

Based on these questions, it was possible to achieve a substantive and significant reduction in operating carbon emissions of 40 percent in the 80-unit Seasons at Ontario community in Ontario, California, and 18 percent in the 60-unit Pleasant View community in Fresno, California, through both energy efficiency and electrification. These improvements were achieved while demonstrating an economically viable pathway that, if financed, could be conducted within a 15-year time frame to qualify for tax credit refinancing.

This work also illustrated barriers to electrification, in particular how California’s current electric distribution systems might not be ready for building electrification and its cost to customers to upgrade inadequate electricity infrastructure. Working to mitigate these costs led to evaluation and demonstration of unique emerging technologies such as the first United States installation of 120-volt heat pump space conditioning units, smart panels to cap electrical demand, and centralization of heat pump water heating to reduce the need for electrical upgrades.