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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the EcoNews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC. And joining me from 350 Humboldt is Wendy Ring. Hey, Wendy. Welcome to the show.

WENDY RING:

Hi, I'm happy to be here.

WHEELER:

All right, Wendy, we have you on because 350 Humboldt is sponsoring an energy efficiency and electrification fair. Let's do the quick plug for this event, the who, what, when, where, why, and then we can get into the subject matter of this fair in just a moment.

RING:

This is a free event to help community members take advantage of federal tax credits for electric vehicles and heat pumps and new windows, new energy efficient windows, insulation, and other energy efficiency measures. So before they're gone, the fair is on Tuesday, the 19th of this month from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Jefferson Community Center.

WHEELER:

All right so as you said there is money that is going away where did this money come from and why is it going away let's start.

RING:

there? Well, money comes from our pockets, because it's part of it. Anyways, I mean, a big chunk of it, because we're talking about federal tax credits and a tax credit, for the most part, is taxes that you owe, and then you don't pay because you spent it on something else. So and that and that's true for the heat, for the heat pump heating and heat pump water heating, and the solar panels and the batteries. So if you owe the taxes, rather than give that money to the federal government to spend on ice and the military and things that we might not be as interested in supporting you, we can be contributing to climate solutions. So that's, that's that part of it.

The exception to that, though, is the electric vehicle tax credit, which you don't have to owe any money. And this is really, this is really kind of amazing. But you just you go to a car dealer, and you, you transfer your tax credit to them, which for new vehicles is $7,500. And for used vehicles is $4,000. And they just take that right off the price of the car. And you don't, and then you're done, basically, you don't, you don't have to, you don't owe, the IRS doesn't come back after you and say, Oh, you didn't know that much in taxes. The only time they would do that is if you actually made too much money to qualify for that tax credit. But you have to make way more money than most folks make in Humboldt County in order to be in that category.

WHEELER:

All right, so there's money expiring, so we should try to take advantage of it while we can. And so, Wendy, you are yourself a pro in electrification. You've been certified to help people go through this process of figuring out what they should electrify in their homes. Can you talk about that experience and what you've learned from this process?

RING:

Yeah, Rewiring America is training regular folks from all around the country to be what they call electrification coaches. It's a month-long training and it's pretty in-depth. There's lectures and office hours and homework and exams and it's very interesting because you are, you know, I mean you've got classmates who are trying to figure out what to do in northern Vermont and then people from southern California and there's a lot of differences. But, you know, you come away from it with a lot of information and a much better understanding of how to do these things and what's most important and what's not so important. So, and then I've been writing some columns for the Mad River Union about the tax credits and as a result of that I've had a lot of people contact me for coaching. So, I've been doing maybe one a day. Yeah, going out to people's houses or talking with them on the phone and it's very rewarding to see somebody get a heat pump water heater or an EV that they didn't know they would be able to get and I, yeah, I really like doing it and it's all free.

WHEELER:

So this is obviously important. Electrification is important for our climate. Why? Why electrification? Why? Why is this the way that we're moving forward in trying to solve the climate crisis? Is is this is this a meaningful action that we can take collectively to to tackle climate change?

RING:

You know, it really is. In California, we burn more fossil gas in our buildings than we do in our power plants. So getting our buildings off of fossil fuel is a huge contribution to cutting climate emissions. And in many cases, it's also important for our health because when you're burning the fuel in your house, there are health hazards from that.

WHEELER:

I've been pushing my wife for a while, and she's finally agreed to replace our last piece of gas infrastructure in our home, which was our stove with an induction stove. And I think that the health issue was what finally drove her. She heard about all of the emissions coming from gas stoves and how that impacts asthma and can increase lung cancer risk. And finally, she was like, all right, fine, do it, and told her about the tax credits and, and all, all these things. And she was like, okay, yeah, this really sounds good. And then I told her about the price of induction stoves. And in her mind, this was some kind of far fangled out emerging technology that was terribly expensive. And then I showed her the price online of some reputable stoves. And she went, oh, my God, that is so significantly cheaper than I thought it was going to be.

And I think that this is kind of a common experience that I've had, is that the government has, or until Trump was president, tried to make it easy for us to make these switches, there have been all these incentives, there have been low interest loans, no interest loans, the ability to get this work done is, is there should you have the motivation to go and do it.

RING:

Well, I gotta tell you, Tom, there is an extra $4,000 what the state will give you just for getting your house completely off gas. And so even if you've done all of it and all you have to do is the induction stove, you can get that $4,000 and you can get an extra bonus if you buy one of the induction stoves that has a battery in it. So, I mean, there are these incredible incentives out there.

WHEELER:

Yeah, I was looking at one of these stoves because one of the costs for installing an induction stove is sometimes the cost to run new wiring, right? And panel upgrades and whatever else. But there are stoves on the market that have a built-in battery. And so you can just plug it into a regular 120 normal outlet, and it can store enough energy in there and then draw energy from the regular outlet that you can run your entire stove for hours as if it was a 240 outlet, as if you had really upgraded the wiring in your house. So there are ways to avoid the costs as well for doing additional wiring. Although there are, as I understand it, some incentives or some programs to help pay for wiring to make your house solar able or to put in that heat pump or do whatever else. Can you talk perhaps a little bit about the wiring improvements to one's house and how we can get that paid for?

RING:

Most of the wiring improvements are you can get help with associated with adopting using one of the incentives for one of the appliances. But the other thing is is that a lot of times you don't need as much as you would think because there are devices that you can get that are circuit sharing so you don't have to add a circuit. For example like for EV charging can have you can share your EV charging circuit with your induction stove circuit and so when you're using your stove it it'll stop charging your EV while you're cooking but that's no big deal right and so you know there's a lot there's a lot of kind of ways around having to do a lot more wiring and so and that's that's the best and that's really important because most people here have 100 amp electrical service and so you can only add so much load to your house and a lot of electricians will come or or the contractors who do installation for for heat pumps and all they do is they stand in front of your breaker box and they add up the numbers on your on your breakers and say oh you can't have that because you just you don't you had you'd have to go to 200 amp service and most of the time that's not true.

There is an alternative method for calculating your load which in which you you actually you go to the name plates for all of your your appliances and you add up all of the watts and you're allowed to for most of them to count them at 40 percent instead of 100 percent because we don't have everything on all at the same time and when you do that it turns out that you at most of the time and it worked at my house you don't have to increase your electrical service in order to completely electrify. You have to be a little bit careful about which appliances you choose. For example for heat pump water heaters you you'd want one that's 50 15 amps instead of 30 amps or you'd want 100 there's 120 volt plug-in one so you don't have to do any wiring for that at all. If you want a heat pump hot water heater you can just plug it into a regular outlet. So so it takes a little bit of cleverness and we are going to have somebody from Redwood Energy at the fair who is kind of an the expert in this they promote it they call it the watt diet for for calculating using that alternative calculation which I can also help people do and and and they call it and they have this you know they have a little spreadsheet where you can just enter all your numbers and and and come out with you know how much room you really have with your 100 amp service.

So yeah there's a not I guess there's a lot of sort of perceived barriers that aren't real right now.

WHEELER:

There are, and I can say from experience as someone who's put in a heat pump, who's put in solar, I think that the biggest block was my own brain in terms of getting these done. So if I can do it, I think anyone can do it, really. So I know that each house is different, but I want to create a hypothetical that might be familiar to a lot of folks locally. Let's say we have a 1920s, poorly insulated, three-bedroom, two-bath house, 1,500 square feet-ish in Eureka. So fairly moderate climate, fairly poorly insulated, and it's what we would call a mixed fuel house, right? So there is already, of course, electrical service to the house, but most of the infrastructure is running off of gas. So we have gas water heater, gas dryer, gas stove, and a gas furnace. If one was trying to make the biggest impact on the climate, what would you recommend to replace first? If we were trying to triage this house, what would be the first thing that you would replace?

RING:

You know, that's a sort of a nice abstract way to think about it, but in reality, I mean, in practice,

WHEELER:

Don't play the hypothetical

RING:

Sorry, but I mean, when you talk to people about it, that's not how it goes. It's really more like, okay, how old is that furnace? How old is that water heater? Because if you have a 20-year-old gas furnace, it's gonna die and you're gonna have to replace it. And the question is, what do you wanna be doing, putting into the atmosphere for the next 20 years? Or maybe your furnace, you just, you got a new one, but your water heater is 10 years old. So, I mean, I think people are very practical in the way that they think about these things. And either one of those, those are the big ones in terms of greenhouse gas contributions. It's not your stove. And the one that was kind of surprising to me that I learned from rewiring is that windows are the least bang for your buck in terms of carbon emissions. Everybody thinks, oh, I have old windows and I have to replace them, but these other things are far and away bigger reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. Joining me from 350 Humboldt is Wendy Ring, sponsoring an energy efficiency and electrification fair. So we have talked so far about things like gas stoves and water heaters. Solar is also something that folks might be thinking about. What is the state of affairs these days with solar? Because at one point the state of California was giving a sweeter incentive deal for homeowners to install solar. Is it still worth installing solar now or is it just cheaper to pay for Repower Plus, the service through RCEA, where you can get 100% renewable energy through RCEA?

RING:

Well, the tax credit is 30% off. So if you want for solar and for batteries, so if you believe in decentralizing power production, and having some backup for yourself, then that's still a really good thing to do. Economically, it doesn't pay back nearly as fast as it used to. That's what they did is they took away, they lowered the price of the power that you can sell back to the grid. If you get solar and a battery, it's still an okay deal, because you're selling the power back to PG&E at a much higher rate, because it's happening during the time of day, like during peak when the prices are higher. So you get more money back from them for that. Without a battery, it's economically not that great a deal anymore. However, if you want to do it, now is the time because you can get 30% off the cost. And if you are low income, then if you're on an electric rate, that's a CARE or a FARA rate. Or if you are on Medi-Cal, or WIC, or CalFresh food stamps, or Supplemental Social Security, you can get a free solar and battery right now.

WHEELER:

Tell us more.

RING:

It's a great program that the state has. And they also provide free batteries for people of all incomes who have, who are dependent on electrical medical equipment. So, you know, if you have a power wheelchair or if you use a CPAP or oxygen or a nebulizer for asthma, then you can get a free battery. So, and these are incentives that have been running for a long time, but they run and then they run out of money and then they open up again. And so it's sort of, this is now is the time to get in there because the funds are available.

WHEELER:

So on greenhouse gas emissions and on energy production, a lot of the energy in Humboldt County is generated by the Humboldt Bay Generating Station, which burns natural gas to provide power to Humboldt County. So I'm curious, if we electrify things, are we going to have a climate benefit given that a substantial amount of the local energy production comes from a natural gas plant?

RING:

That's a really good question. And there, it depends. It certainly is a benefit when it comes to electric vehicles. When it comes to heating, it's, it's a little bit at this point, not clear, particularly because of the biomass contribution. If you if you consider the 20 year global warming impact of burning sawmill waste for electricity, it makes it makes our power source really dirty. And there's a group at UC Davis that looks at at HVAC emissions, and and they have, they did some modeling, when you said, if your carbon intensity is this much, then then it's good to then you get this greenhouse gas reduction. And if your carbon intensity of your power is this much, then maybe you don't.

And so, so it is, but I think the point of all of this is that, that we have to get our buildings off of fossil gas, and we have to get our electricity off of fossil gas. And we need when we need to do each when the opportunity arises. So right now we have this great opportunity because we have all of this funding available. And so we need to take advantage of it. And then we also have opportunities through RCEA to change where they're buying their where they're getting their electricity from, for example, that biomass contract. And and so we got to take advantage of all of it. I don't think you can be locked into we have to do this in a certain order, we have to do everything all at once.

WHEELER:

And you make an investment in something like a new heat pump for your home. That is a lasting long investment such that in 10 years it is possible, perhaps even probable, that we're going to have some measure of offshore wind energy coming back onshore in Humboldt County. So we are, as you said, kind of tackling the energy generation problem. At the same time, we're tackling the energy efficiency and home energy use issues. So we need to move forward on all fronts simultaneously.

RING:

I also think it's really important. I mean, you know, as a physician, I spent my life taking care of low-income people and folks struggle a lot just to be able to pay their electric bills. And sometimes it's heat or eat is what they call it. You're trying to decide what is it that you're gonna pay for? You know, is it food? Is it medicine? Is it to keep so your lights don't get shut off? And so there are, for some folks, for some particular folks, there are some huge economic benefits to doing this right now. And those are the people who are heating their house and their hot water with electricity because these alternatives on these heat pumps, heating and heat pump water heating is three times more efficient. And so it provides substantial lowering of electric bills. So, and then the other thing is, is that for anybody who is to an EV or who gets a heat pump, that entitles them to a lower rate plan, to the lowest rate plans that you can get from RCEA or from PGE. So just being the owner of a heat pump cuts your electric bills.

WHEELER:

And if you do multiple things simultaneously, if you pursue solar at the same time that you are putting in a heat pump to your house, especially as you said, if you have a battery paired with your solar, then you're you're providing your own power throughout a large portion of the day, or you're selling back power to the grid at a favorable time, I've I effectively, I have a heat pump in my house, I have solar in my house, I don't pay for energy, I don't pay for heat, I paid at one point $18,000 for my solar system. But now I'm running, I'm running in the black, I'm making money off of all of this. And I would say that my house is like more pleasant with my heat pump, it is more consistently warm, it does a better job than my crappy old wall mounted gas furnace ever did.

So this has been kind of revolutionary to me. As as a homeowner, it's been like nicer, I am saving money, it cost some amount at the beginning. But I was able to get 0% interest loans, which like, how can you get a 0% interest loan? That's crazy. I don't even understand how that's possible. We got 0% interest loans, and we're able to pay it off over a reasonable timeframe. And it's I'm on the other side. And it's better, I can say, one one point that you made with electric cars, which I think is interesting. Electric cars, even with dirty fuel sources are generally going to have still an improvement of carbon benefits or fewer carbon emissions, because electric cars are just so much more efficient than gas powered cars. Gas powered cars, only a small fraction of the total energy and that gasoline ever gets put to forward motion, right? So so much of it gets lost in heat, we're always trying to dissipate the heat from our cars engines, tiny little explosions going on all the time inside of our cars engine generates a lot of heat. So we're we're kicking that energy away, we're losing a bunch in friction on our tires, we're losing a bunch in, in sound generation from from the engine and dampening that sound.

So like, I think it's it's sub 30% of total power from gasoline goes back into forward motion. Electric vehicles are just far more efficient, so much more of the energy that gets stored in a battery gets put into the thing that you're trying to do. So in this way, even with relatively dirty fuel sources, you're still going to see positive carbon benefits from your new electric car. All right.

RING:

All right, can we talk about it the fair? I just want to say who's going to be there? There are going to be experts there from RCEA helping people understand how you stack all these different rebates because you can use them together. And so what we're talking about in terms of money is for an EV or a plug-in hybrid, depending on your income, somewhere between $9,500 and $19,000 off the price of a car.

For heat pumps, it's between $5,000 and $7,000 off. For heat pump water heaters, it's somewhere between $4,000 and $7,000 off. So they're going to be helping people figure out, because those are totals, how to find the benefits and how to stack them. We're going to have the folks from Redwood Energy helping people figure out how to do this with their 100-amp service. We're going to have solar and heat pump contractors there. We're going to have some dealers for the new EVs that are tax credit eligible. I'll be there doing electrification coaching. And then there will be, and this is I think one of the more important things, is that we're going to have a bunch of people who already have heat pumps or who already have EVs and solar panels talking about how that has been for them.

Because I think that sometimes what you hear from your neighbors is more important than what you hear from a salesperson. And we know that's true for solar. We know when a home gets solar, that more houses in that neighborhood end up getting solar. And we know that that's true for the diffusion of EVs. So we're hoping that if people are able to come and talk with folks in our community who already have these things, that that will help people get more comfortable with the technology and lower that mental barrier that you were talking about to switching to electric.

WHEELER:

All right, so once again, the event sponsored by 350 Humboldt is the Energy Efficiency and Electrification Fair, and it's happening this Tuesday, August 19th, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Jefferson Community Center in Eureka. So I know I'm going to be there because now I'm on the lookout for an induction stove, and I'm really excited about this move to an induction stove. I'll be able to boil water faster than I can with my regular gas stove. I'll have cleaner air inside my house with the new induction stove. I will get a payment from the state of California for capping off my gas because this is the last gas thing that I'm going to have in my house, or I'm getting rid of the last gas thing. So I will be there, and I hope that everyone listening will join me too. All right, just a couple of minutes remaining. Wendy, do you want to plug your work as an energy consultant? Yeah.

RING:

I like to call myself a coach, it's a little more, a little more friendly and it's free. So, so I was certified by Rewiring America to coach people and help answer questions and help people figure out what they would like to do in their homes and what resources they can access. And anybody who's interested in that can just text me 707-845-2466.

WHEELER:

That's crazy.

RING:

I look forward to talking with you. It's kind of fun.

WHEELER:

All right, everyone text Wendy. Only text her if you really want to do like electric stuff. Don't text her weird things.

RING:

I know, it's like putting your phone number out there, go to people's houses that you don't know. I mean, it's a little bit.

WHEELER:

Well, I want to thank you, Wendy. I also want to thank 350 Humboldt. It's really great that Humboldt County has our own 350 chapter. I see other much larger communities. There's a 350 Portland, a 350 Seattle. The work of 350 Humboldt has been great in our local community to bring forward things like this electrification fair, to push for local ordinances. It's been a fantastic group. And I know that 350 Humboldt's always looking for new activists to get inspired because it is a member driven organization. There's not paid staff. So the folks like Wendy are doing this out of the kindness of their own heart, out of concern for our community, for our, our, our planet. So check out 350 Humboldt.org. Let's see. Is that right? 350.org something, something humble, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

So just Google 350 Humboldt if you want to join. It's a fantastic group. And I would really encourage, especially young people to get involved because this is our planet that we are going to inherit. So Wendy, again, thank you so much for being on the show. The event this Tuesday, the 19th from 4 to 7 p.m. is the Energy Efficiency and Electrification Fair at the Jefferson Community Center, where we will have folks there to answer all of your questions that you might have about moving your house to all electric or in time to all electric or replacing maybe one thing at a time to all electric. All right, Wendy, thank you so much for joining the show.

RING:

It's been great. Thank you.

WHEELER:

All right, join us again on this channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.