Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future's (SAHF)'s case study explores learnings from Preservation of Affordable Housing's (POAH's) Salem Heights development, which electrified the HVAC system and improved the building envelope. The report shares details about the funding used and other strategies employed to make the project come together.

Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future's (SAHF)'s case study explores challenges and achievements from The Community Builders' North Commons at Village Hill development in western Massachusetts, built to the Passive House standard. The case study shares the developer's perspective on assembling a team, electrifying hot water heating, and installing Phius-compliant windows. Ultimately, the benefits outweighed the costs for this development.

This report examines how budget-constrained households balance spending on air conditioning versus other essentials like food and clothing during hot weather. Using banking data from Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, it finds that low-income households often cope with high electricity bills by reducing air conditioning use and enduring more heat. The findings aim to help policymakers identify strategies to better support these households and improve their welfare amid rising temperatures.

Electrifying heating systems with air-to-air heat pumps is crucial for achieving global greenhouse gas targets. This report uses simulations of 550,000 U.S. households to evaluate the costs and benefits of various heat pump performance levels and insulation upgrades. The analysis highlights the potential for significant emissions reductions and identifies the importance of efficiency and insulation in optimizing cost-effectiveness. It also suggests that supportive incentives and policies may be necessary to address affordability challenges and promote widespread adoption.

Large multifamily buildings with central heating systems that burn fossil fuels are among the hardest to decarbonize, but new systems such as window-mounted heat pumps, central air-to-water heat pumps, and “mono-block” mini heat pumps provide new options for decarbonizing these buildings. This report finds that window heat pumps generally have the lowest life-cycle capital and energy costs compared to various decarbonization options. 

The Massachusetts Decarbonization Hub helps owners of affordable multifamily housing interested in reducing carbon emissions from their Massachusetts properties navigate the complicated landscape of decarbonization. Created in partnership with LISC Boston and RMI, this site provides quick access to guides, resources, and funding opportunities currently available to support these projects. The Hub outlines some key steps to decarbonization, connects owners with technical providers, directs owners to the available incentive and grant funding programs, and showcases case studies of recent deep energy retrofit projects for inspiration.

The Hub is a technical resource designed to help equip the multifamily affordable housing community in Colorado with electrification design and decisions through access to technical resources, peer learning, and financing and development resources. This resource supports Colorado’s Renewable Energy and Climate Action Goals. In addition to local code compliance, building electrification can help reduce carbon emissions, improve indoor air quality for residents, reduce operating costs, and more.

Salem Heights Apartments, an affordable multifamily property in Massachusetts, recently underwent a deep energy retrofit to achieve passive house performance. This case study highlights the retrofit design strategies that enable 60% energy use reduction and show the integrated benefit of efficiency improvements, electrification, and solar. Specific strategies are described for the building envelope, exterior insulation, HVAC, and solar energy.

Over half of California’s 3.2 million multifamily units were constructed before energy efficiency standards, resulting in poor performance and high greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve California’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, affordable multifamily housing must improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and lower tenant utility bills while enhancing quality of life. Yet building owners face many challenges to improving the performance of their buildings. This report covers the role certain types of energy service agreements, combined with federal incentives, can play in scaling affordable multifamily retrofits.

Geothermal heat pumps offer highly efficient heating and cooling without fossil fuels. They are especially valuable in supplying heating on extremely cold days and support heating electrification with only modest impacts on electric grids. These heat pumps are widely applicable from single family homes to large properties, or even networked systems providing heating and cooling to entire neighborhoods. The blog article highlights the characteristics of this technology and new opportunities for greater adoption.