Building Decarb Debrief: May 8, 2020

The health, economic, and climate benefits of building electrification continued to roll in this week. Here are a few of my favorite reads. I hope you enjoy them.

• I am late to reading McKinsey's: Climate Math What a 1.5-degree Pathway Would Take. I highly recommend anyone working in climate and clean energy read the report to understand the scale, speed, and level of change we will need. We are well past swapping out lightbulbs, folks. But I was quite disappointed by the level of building electrification they believe will happen over the next 30 years, "The share of households with electric space heating would have to increase from less than 10 percent today to 26 percent by 2050. To make the most of electric heating, buildings would need to replace traditional heating equipment with newer, more efficient technologies. Improved insulation and home energy management would also be necessary to maximize the benefits of electric heating and enable further emissions reductions by 2050." That is less than 2% per year globally for the next 30 years—game on McKinsey.
• Natural gas stoves are often seen as the final hurdle of building electrification. But a new report out by the Rocky Mountain Institute summarized in this great Vox piece by David Roberts might be seen as the historical turning point on the topic. The report is a literature review from the past few decades that compiles a staggering amount of research on the known health impacts of natural gas stove cooking. "The EPA has known about the dangers for a long time. A 1986 report from its Clean Air Advisory Committee to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) urged the CPSC to do a better job of assessing the dangers — particularly related to NO2 — of indoor air pollution sources like gas stoves." If people lose the "love" for their gas stoves, the "like" for their gas water heater and furnace will go with it.
• Is it building electrification and efficiency stimulus week yet? A new article over at Bloomberg Green highlights the substantial upfront costs and deep energy retrofit opportunities of existing buildings. While much of the chatter in the building industry is about extending, expanding, or modifying building tax credits the most exciting sentence in the whole article relates to prefab retrofit opportunities, "it makes sense to get started with the 1.2 million units of public housing and use it as a kind of innovation laboratory. "As the techniques improve, you can then go to more market-rate housing," he says. Eventually, he predicts, the upfront costs and the future energy savings will even out, making the whole task both cost- and carbon-neutral." Speed, scale, and innovation are essential to achieving our built environment goals.
• Finally, FlexiWatts. We are going to need them, lots of them. Especially as we move to an electricity system where demand matches supply, not the other way around. Don't believe in the importance of enabling flexible buildings? Did you know that already "Buildings account for 75% of U.S. electricity consumption and up to 80% of peak demand." Both consumption and demand will only grow as we electrify our buildings. Even if it is at less than 2% a year for the next 30 years... (Yes I am offended) Glad to see DOE is continuing research to advance this $16 billion annual opportunity.