In my previous post, I described an award-winning block-by-block energy retrofit project that weatherized nearly 75% of the homes in Murray City, Ohio. In this post, I explain how and why the project succeeded, and I share seven lessons learned for those interested in replicating the model in their town.
The lessons are gleaned from my recent interview with Ron Rees, Nicole Peoples, and Tom Calhoun with the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development (COAD). COAD coordinated the Murray City project, and members of its energy services team conducted the initial inspections and final quality assurance checks in participating homes.
“Where we had success with Murray City,” said Calhoun, Housing Program Manger, “it was getting the community involved in the project.” COAD learned, he said, that “one size wasn’t going to fit all in this town. We had to approach these folks in different ways. We made the commitment to do it, so we were forced to overcome barriers with folks.”
Here is some of what they learned:
1) Retrofit block by block and focus on the whole house: Tom Calhoun said that an impact study had not been conducted to record the dollar and time savings stemming from the block-by-block retrofit strategy used in Murray City. He did share anecdotal observations vouching for the economy of scale and streamlining benefits of the approach.
For instance: concentrating the workforce – several crews worked concurrently in the same small town – reduced travel times, said Calhoun. Crews knew where they were going to be each day; materials were stored in town for quick deployment; and crews used each other as a resource. COAD energy services team crews made frequent visits to Murray City to perform initial or final home inspections, which meant they were able to answer questions.
Calhoun also stressed that COAD crews approached each home in whole-house fashion. Low-income homeowners were eligible to receive, at no cost, a comprehensive suite of improvements including: replacement of furnaces and hot-water tanks; attic, sidewall, floor, and foundation insulation; shell retrofits, including a thorough air leakage package; replacement of refrigerators, freezers, and air-conditioning units; and upgraded lighting. Calhoun said COAD’s retrofits typically reduce a customer’s utility use anywhere from 25% to 50%, or about $400 a year in energy savings.
2) Energy efficiency is contagious: Retrofits begat retrofits in Murray City. “If you see a crew working, it’s not subtle when you have someone running blown-in insulation into sidewalls. That made it real obvious this was happening, and that allowed more people to know this was real. This wasn’t a fly-by-night operation,” said Rees, COAD’s Executive Director.
“When you bring a customer in, and you’re showing them that other people right in their immediate vicinity are having these things done, and you can even show them being done – they can see the equipment being used – they can hear the good reports, the word-of-mouth advertising,” said Tom Calhoun.
“One of the interesting things about Murray City that I’m trying to sell to people,” he added, “is that if you can get an entire block of people doing this, or an entire small town, they work together to make it happen; they talk to each other, and they start encouraging one another.”
Calhoun said he had talked to private insulation and retrofit companies about the Murray City example. “I think this could be turned into a marketing idea for the private sector, as long as you have the rebate packages there as part of your pitch,” he said.
3) Credibility is everything: The retrofit project succeeded, in part, because of backing from the town’s longtime mayor, Sharon Koon. “Having the mayor as one of our biggest cheerleaders was great because – as would be the case in many small towns – the mayor has a lot of credibility,” said Ron Rees. “And she was behind all of this. Without her buy-in, I don’t think we could have pulled this off. If anyone asked, ‘Is this the real deal?’ Well, she could vouch for that.”
He went on: “It’s not as much a factor in other areas of the country, but a problem in Appalachia is that people are distrustful of outsiders. That’s part of the culture. It has, frankly, a lot to do with local communities being exploited over the years. The coal industry has been one example of that where people came in from outside and took the resources and the money, and left the mess behind.”
Tom Calhoun said that some households just didn’t want to participate, even though they qualified for free upgrades. “As Tom pointed out,” Rees said, “even with everything we were doing, some people who were eligible turned us down because they were suspicious that it wasn’t really as it was presented.”
Calhoun said an auspicious kick-off meeting at the Town Hall – some 30 people showed up to hear the COAD pitch – helped, but some folks still had reservations. “Slowly,” he said, “a trust built up between us being there in the community and them seeing their neighbors getting services. And they talked to each other.”
4) Make the paperwork less intimidating: “If you’re familiar with weatherization, you know there’s some considerable paperwork – you can scare off some civilians,” said Rees. Calhoun agreed: “Some of the requirements for these programs can be obnoxious and complex. Some folks just didn’t want to mess with that.”
“One of the issues in dealing with low-income families,” Rees added, “is that many of them are challenged in terms of their education or literacy, and they are intimidated by the paperwork.” COAD turned to Mayor Koon for help. “The mayor, who was very supportive of the effort, let us take over a portion of the Town Hall. We had staff there to assist people making applications.”
5) Tap diverse sources of funding: I asked the COAD team how they planned to replicate the Murray City project now that the boost in weatherization funding provided by the stimulus was gone. Calhoun said they were not sure, and that they are exploring new financing mechanisms.
Reduced federal weatherization funding would still be available, they hoped, in addition to rebates through the local utilities, American Electric Power and Columbia Gas. COAD serves 30 counties in southeastern Ohio, however, and without the higher funding level available under the stimulus, it will be harder to concentrate weatherization money in one town, Calhoun said. They might need to add a financing option, he said, through local lenders or on-bill financing (I’ve written about on-bill financing several times at this blog, most recently last November).
Ron Rees said they haven’t given up on more federal money. He noted that the National Association for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP) wants to re-open a conversation about weatherization funding levels with Congress. “The fact that we’re able to leverage utility funds as heavily as we do is something that makes it a lot more palatable for the Republicans. If they can see the private sector sharing the cost, it’s a lot easier to sell that,” he said.
6) Leverage utility funds: With federal weatherization funding returning to pre-stimulus levels, I asked how much COAD could expect to rely on utility incentives going forward. Nicole Peoples, Special Projects Coordinator, pointed to Ohio Senate Bill 221, which passed in May 2008. The bill established an energy efficiency resource standard; investor-owned utilities operating in the state must achieve annual savings leading to a 22% cumulative reduction in retail electricity sales by the end of 2025. As long as the policy remains, COAD seemed confident that utility programs, such as Columbia Gas’ WarmChoice program, would direct money to rebates for energy-efficient appliances and energy services for low-income households.
Peoples also mentioned the “Revitalization of Murray City” project, where utility matching funds were used to address another long-standing issue in town, the aging playground. Murray City received a $54,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ NatureWorks program to install new playground equipment, resurface the basketball court, and upgrade the bathroom in the town park. American Electric Power’s matching funds paid for installation of four free-standing, solar-powered lights, which will save the city $80 monthly on its electricity bill.
7) There’s no shortage of work to be done: “We have no shortage work, I’m sure, in this country as far as the retrofit business,” said Tom Calhoun. COAD’s home weatherization funding level, typically $9 million annually, was boosted to $30 million annually under the stimulus.
“What it showed us was the enormity of the task that’s left,” he said. “We’d have to be funded at that level for 20 years to get even close to weatherizing all the homes in our service area.” With the injection of funds from the stimulus, COAD was able to complete 5,000 home weatherization jobs each year in its service territory.
