What Will It Take to Equitably Decarbonize Homes in the Upper Midwest?

What will it take to fully decarbonize all 1-4 unit homes in a cold climate city? Can it be done equitably? And what implications may this have for program planning and deployment? In this session, we describe a weatherization and electrification roadmap CEE developed with city staff and community stakeholders in Minneapolis. Like many communities, the City of Minneapolis has big climate goals. To meet those, the energy use from residential buildings, which make up nearly a quarter of community wide carbon emissions, must be addressed. Luckily, well developed weatherization methods and off-the-shelf decarbonization technologies exist for the residential sector. We engaged stakeholders on a process to evaluate these measures through real-home-data-informed modeling scenarios that showed the project pace needed to meet climate goals. We analyzed upfront costs, the workforce needed, ongoing operational costs, and carbon impacts of different combinations of measures. Most importantly, we evaluated these outcomes in relation to the impact on equitable implementation. This roadmap included concrete recommendations and a published report that led to an increase of over $7 million of city budget for 2024. Come dive into the details in this session!