Across the globe, we're facing environmental crises from sinking islands to endangered polar bears to epic droughts.

Even here in western New York, an area that many would consider a safe haven, the effects of climate change are being felt.

I'm Jasmine Singer, host of WXXI and Environmental Connections.

After 20 years of living in New York City and Los Angeles, my wife Moore and I decided to move here to Rochester, New York, an area that we felt was well-positioned to explore our commitment to really making a difference vis a vis the climate.

Our first step in that was to turn our 100 year old house into a climate friendly home.

And that meant electrification, a truly buzz worthy topic that we're going to be discussing today.

So join us as we embark on new ways of creating paths to sustainable living.

This is Environmental Connections.

Joining us to discuss this are three experts working really hard on all of these issues.

From the city of Rochester is Shalini Beath, the energy and sustainability manager for the Division of Environmental Quality in the Department of Environmental Services.

Welcome, Shalini, Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

And then we have Jenna Lawson, who is the Finger Lakes Regional Clean Energy Hub director at the Climate Solutions Accelerator.

So glad you're here, Jenna.

Thank you.

Happy to be here.

And we have Ryan Puckett.

He is the general manager of Wise Home Energy, which specializes in energy efficiency, home upgrades and electrification.

He is also the secretary of the Building Performance Contractors Association of New York State and he helped my wife and I get started on our own efficiency electrification journey.

Welcome, Ryan.

It's great to see you again.

So, Jenna, could you help us understand what we mean by electrification and its relevance to slowing down climate change?

Sure.

So electrification and I like to think of it as a journey.

It's certainly not something that you need to go into one day and completely be able to convert your life.

In a lot of cases, that's just not attainable for folks.

But the goal is ultimately to move away from the combustion of fossil fuels in your home.

This can be propane or oil.

If you have delivered fuel as my parents do, in Genesee County.

And the more traditional gas furnaces that we see, especially around Monroe County.

So in addition to the co-benefits of electrification, which is not breathing in the effects of combusted fuel in your home, it's also really important to divest from fossil fuels and invest in electrification and go beyond that and make sure that not only are homes electrified, but actually the power that is generated to electrify our homes is also generated by clean energy.

There's a lot there that I want to dig into and I think we will.

But let's turn to Ryan.

Ryan, can you tell us a little bit about what electrification entails and why it's important for homeowners to consider this?

it's really different for every specific home.

As general manager of Wise Home Energy we retrofit existing houses.

The 100 year old housing stock that we have here in Rochester to try to get them to be energy efficient, comfortable, sustainable, and then convert away from fossil fuels.

What it entails is really different for every single home, and each home is unique.

But typically we like to start personally with an energy assessment to evaluate the entire house, where it's at right now, and try to recommend improvements that both meet the home's needs and our client's goals.

So Ron, we're here today to do your energy assessment and full home performance evaluation.

And one of the tests we're going to be doing is a blower door air leakage test.

And what this test does, it simulates a 20 mile per hour wind on all exterior surfaces of your home.

And that allows us to quantify how much air, moisture, heat and humidity are leaking in and out of your home, depending on the season.

And when we have this running, we can walk around with our infrared camera and our vapor smokestick and really pinpoint those major leakage points in your house.

And we'll identify those and we'll want to seal those up as much as possible.

The tighter your home can be, the better it's going to be for energy efficiency, indoor air quality and comfort.

So with that being said, you ready to get started?

Ready.

So what we're looking for here is to get the house to a -50 pascals of pressure, and that would be equivalent to a 20 mile per hour wind on your home.

We're about there.

So we're right now in your living room, and we've got your dining room right through these pocket doors, and one thing that we find a lot of in these older homes in Rochester, New York, is there's a lot of air leakage through the pocket door.

You can see the smoke being pulled across the door here.

That's because air is actually coming in from outside through your wall and coming in here.

So if you have a seat that's sitting right here, you might notice a breeze coming through.

So this is one area that we really want to identify and seal up and stop that air leakage.

Yeah.

So then we'd also want to look at, you know, doors and windows, of course.

And you can see the smoke isn't really moving too much.

So this door is actually pretty well sealed right here, although I can feel a little bit coming through the glass.

So then also, besides using smoke, we can use an infrared camera to identify cold and hot spots, where it’s coming in and out.

So you can see around the seams of this door here, it's a little bit darker of a color and more purple, that's cold air leaking into your home.

So Ron, you can see here that your walls are insulated.

You can see your studs and then it's a little bit warmer in between.

But down at the bottom, you see that dark spot, right against your trim?

It's a decent amount of air coming through there.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

I see that.

So Ron, another place that we look at is old fireplaces.

Do you ever use this at all?

Rarely.

Very rarely.

Yeah, so a lot of people think I'm going to start a fire and that's going to heat up my home.

A lot of times that actually doesn't happen.

It might heat the room up that you're in, but it actually helps suck air out of the house.

So let's just check to see today if it is leaking or not.

And you can see right there how much air is coming through.

Okay.

And can you actually, with the back of your hand, you might even be able to feel that.

Oh, yeah.

So this is something that we'd want to identify and seal up, especially if you're not using it anymore.

If you never use it, they make these balloons that you can install to really seal up any air that's leaking in and out of the house.

Alright, Ron, that concludes our blower door air leakage test today.

We found some definite areas for improvement.

I see.

Overall, your home wasn't really that bad for a house of this age, which I was actually pretty surprised that.

Was that surprising to you?

A bit, yes.

Yeah.

Well, there are some pinpoints that we can take a look at and really make some definite improvements.

I'm going to give you a report with some photos and findings as well as our recommendations, and we can make a decision on how you'd like to move forward with any improvements for energy efficiency in your home.

Great.

Is that something that anyone could get this assessment?

Is it is it free?

Yeah.

So in New York State, an energy assessment is free for anybody that lives in a single family, two, four family home.

There are different types of energy assessments that New York State offers and different types of incentives based off of income or what type of home you're living in.

The blower door air leakage test is really one of the most crucial tests to have done on your home if you're having an energy assessment.

It really tells you how much air is leaking in and out and where those leakage points are.

And, you know, one of the best things we talk a lot about insulation, but actually tightening up your home and reducing the drafts is one of the best things you can do for indoor air quality, as well as reducing your heating and cooling this.

Amazing.

You're totally nerding out on this, aren't you?

I'm very happy to be here today.

This is what I do.

I love that.

So, Shalini, I want to turn to you.

Can you talk about the role of electrification and efficiency and what that plays in the city's climate action plan?

Absolutely.

So we have a climate action plan both for our municipal operations as well as for a community wide impacts.

And in both plans, our overall goal is to move away from fossil fuels so we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, which are primarily resulting in climate change, and to move towards a more renewable energy future.

So what that means is we as the city of Rochester, lead by example, we first start with our own facilities and we been doing all of these building upgrades.

There's so many.

So I will only give you a few.

There's LED lighting upgrades are huge for us and that includes all of our street lights as well.

So that has resulted in tremendous energy conservation benefits for us and it's also fantastic for our environment.

Also, we have solar at City Hall and another facility is powered by a two megawatt solar field.

And we also have a couple other solar installations at the public market and one of our libraries.

And we will continue to pursue these actions, including electrifying our fleet wherever possible, expanding our charging infrastructure.

So that's the municipal side.

In terms of the community wide side, we really all need to come together to reach our greenhouse gas reduction goals.

So we started by public education.

We have, you know, the energy smart campaign, as Jenna said, we don't have to electrify completely today.

We can start with very small steps.

So if you go to Energy Smart Rochester, that's at city of Rochester dot gov, search for Energy Smart.

You can start with switching out your light bulbs just get a bunch of LED light bulbs and switch out those light bulbs.

That's the easy step.

Jenna, I want to turn to you for a moment.

Although we have a lot of renewable energy generation in western New York, some of the electricity generated in Monroe County is made by burning fossil fuels.

Why is it better to use electricity over fossil fuels to run appliances in the home from a climate point of view?

Like how can homeowners make sure that they're greater with home electrification consumption of electricity is being drawn from sustainable sources like solar or wind?

So definitely would look into community solar enrollment, which is something that's available regardless of if you have solar panels on your home, you don't.

That's not the only way that you can make sure that you're accessing clean energy.

There's something called community choice aggregation, which is an opportunity for communities to buy into clean energy technology.

But I do want to kind of shout us out.

I work at a clean energy hub, which is a NYSERDA initiative, and we are one of 12 hubs around the state.

And comparatively, upstate New York has a pretty decarbonized energy grid, which is something definitely to be proud of.

I also kind of want to tap Ryan in for like the performance factor.

I'm trying to think of the R-rating that is kind of why also maybe I'm saying the wrong thing.

Can you help me out of like why it's more beneficial to use electricity?

Yeah, I can say that, compared to the national fuel mix for electricity generation, upstate New York has I think it's about one third of the carbon emissions nationally to create our fuel.

So we're already on the right path for sustainable electricity.

And if you do convert over from fossil fuel systems to heat and cool your homes or if your cooking electric is going to be much more sustainable source of power for your house, so you're going to be automatically right off the bat reducing the amount of carbon emissions that you're home creates.

Hi.

Welcome to our fully electric energy efficient home.

This is my wife, Moore.

We wish we could show you the upstairs because it is very cute.

But when it comes to energy efficiency and electrification, the magic happens in the basement.

So come on in.

We had a home energy efficiency assessment done by Ryan Puckett from Wise Home Energy.

And what we learned was that our 100 year old house had zero insulation, which is mind blowing.

So we put in foam.

There's three inches down here in the basement.

We also put foam in the attic and we did blown cellulose on the first and second floors.

Another piece of efficiency was we replaced the single pane hundred year old very rickety windows with in the basement, double pane and the rest of the house, triple pane windows.

We sealed up the ducts in our HVAC system, and it's not pretty, but it helps keep the warm air in the winter and the cold air in the summer in the system and up to the first and second floors where we do most of our living and not leaking into the basement.

Yeah, it's definitely not pretty, but there are a bunch of things that we do want to show you because when it comes to energy efficiency, this is really important.

But electrification is key.

For those of you who are interested in living as sustainably as possible in your home, we want to show you some of our cool gadgets.

So come on to the back of the house.

These are the closed loop pipes of our geothermal system.

They run water out into our backyard where there are 680 foot deep wells and they take advantage of the constant 50 to 55 degree temperature of the earth under about five feet.

And what they do is they either warm the water in the system or they cool the water in the system, depending on whether it's time to heat or cool the house.

These pipes run in the closed loop system over to the water furnace where the heat is either extracted from the water or dumped into the water, depending on the season.

So this is our water furnace.

We use it to heat and cool our home.

And for added efficiency, we have Agnes.

Agnes is our heat exchanger and what she does is she helps us have like a constant flow of fresh air that is the correct temperature without making the furnace work too hard.

So the fresh air comes in here and it gets blown over these coils.

There are lots of coils in here.

And these are heated by the return.

So when the air goes out back into the backyard, we capture the heat in here and reuse it so that the furnace itself doesn't have to work as hard to raise it up.

The temperature that's comfortable for us.

And here we've got our hybrid hot heat pump, hot water heater.

And just like the water furnace extracts heat from the closed loop water system that goes into the backyard.

This extracts heat from the air.

It comes in through the top, and the air here in the basement has enough heat in it for it to warm up the water.

It's set at 125 degrees, which is the standard temperature that water heaters are set at.

And just like the water furnace, it is indistinguishable from any other heater.

So it's the same.

And if we have, say, lots of gas over here, we're taking a bunch of showers in a row or we’re doing a lot of dishes, we can switch the mode and sort of add a little bit of juice, a little bit of electric generated hot water to the heat pump generated hot water.

And you love the savings.

Oh, my God.

Every time I'm sad, I just come down and I look at the energy guy.

And it makes her happy.

Makes me happy.

Hashtag homeowner.

So this is the last gadget down here that we were super excited to tell you about.

And it's probably Moore’s favorite.

Well, I use it the most, probably.

This is our hybrid heat pump dryer.

And I was really excited when our electric dryer died because this one is so much more efficient.

And also, you'll notice there's no vent.

We aren't wasting energy dumping heat outside like a normal electric dryer.

What's exciting about this is that it not only draws heat from the air, it also pulls water out.

And so I love the ritual of dumping the water chamber when I'm done with each load.

You are a nerd.

Totally.

Yeah, totally.

So you might be thinking, is this any better than fossil fuels?

Because how much electricity does this use?

So let's talk about that.

So with all these great electrical gadgets and getting rid of all the natural gas gadgets we had in the house, we knew that we were going to have an additional load on our electrical panel.

So the very first thing before we put in any of these systems was to get an upgrade.

We went from 100 AMP to a 200 AMP electrical panel.

And then we even took it a step further.

And got solar panels and they're on the roof of the house and the garage.

And we did that to offset a lot of the additional electricity needs of this fully electrified house.

As an asthmatic, all of this has really helped your health.

I love it.

My asthmatic lungs love that there's no more combustion of hydrocarbons in the house.

Right.

So electrification might not be the sexiest topic in the world, but it makes a really big difference.

And when it comes to her happy wife, happy life.

So before we went to break, we had an email from a listener named Rob who said, Nope, I'm not doing it.

No.

Can we just talk about the Rob's in the world?

Because there are a lot of Rob's and I get it.

I get it.

Ryan, what do you have to say about that?

So at Wise Home Energy, we might have had a Rob or two.

I think once they were more educated and saw the work that we were doing with electrification and building performance, they've come on board and we've actually switched over people that were never interested in getting off of fossil fuels to heating and cooling their homes with the pump systems.

And I think the more people really understand how comfortable and how efficient these systems can be, they're going to really start switching over to electrifying everything.

And if I go to this Rob specifically, nevermind the Rob's of the world, if you do have a gas stove, if you would please run your hood vent fan and crack a window, you are breathing things that are not good for you.

It increases childhood asthma rates, it releases carcinogens into the air.

But I also understand that not every family can afford to make that switch right now.

So there are things that you can do to mitigate and make sure that you are breathing good, clean air.

I actually didn't come to the climate movement because I love the environment.

I'm trying to get into it, but I am very much an indoors person and that's actually why I care about it, because I want people to be comfortable inside.

So in dealing with folks who maybe are climate hesitant or in climate denial, I just focus on these things are scary.

It's a fear transitioning over to an entirely different way of running our economy and having a just transition to a clean energy economy with the new jobs that are coming brings on uncertainty.

And I do have a lot of compassion for peop Thank you.

I feel like you're very validating.

I sort of want you to just be on the other end of the phone with me whenever I need you to.

Just say yes.

Of course, it makes sense that you're scared.

It doesn't make sense.

This is a very scary thing going on.

Climate, and I really understand why someone would not connect the dots between their individual actions and kind of the big picture.

Jenna can you talk about your work with NYSERDA to try to make grants for electrification from the Federal Inflation Reduction Act equitable?

Yeah, so there's a lot being done that is really exciting and there's a lot that we should be a little bit wary of.

The first thing I want to let people know is that there is a program that is existing called Empower Plus.

This is a $10,000 energy efficiency grant that is available to low and moderate income households.

And up until January 31st, there was an eligibility criteria that if you lived in a geo eligible area, you would automatically be eligible for this grant regardless of your income.

And in a lot of cases, the folks that were using that grant were also income eligible, But it kind of removed a barrier that you had to show your paystubs to the contractor that you were getting to do this work.

So because the Inflation Reduction Act is actually going to roll its incentives into the existing Empower Plus program, the federal government doesn't allow geo eligibility as a qualifying factor.

So that means everyone who currently is depending on your eligibility to get this grant, which you're eligible for every three years.

So if you've gotten it before, get it again.

That's no longer going to be a factor that they can use.

So, Shalini, I have a question for you regarding the city of Rochester's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, where does Rochester currently stand in achieving this target?

Yeah, so for our municipal operations, we're doing a really great job and we'll continue to do that because we own and operate our facilities so we can make those investments, we can track that energy and then we can see the results For the community, again, we need to come together and work on this.

So from the city's perspective, I wanted to talk about one way we are promoting our climate action goals through our city programs.

So we recently are so excited because we received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to implement what we call a hero program.

It's the Home Electrification Revitalization Opportunity Program.

So what this means is the city already does an affordable housing program.

And so this is different because the Office of Energy and Sustainable City is partnering with our housing division.

So two departments are coming together and we are taking the affordable housing program, which basically rehabilitates vacant homes and provides them for residents who meet income eligibility requirements, who aren't in disadvantaged communities.

But we're making them sustainable.

So any opportunity that we have where we can create housing, we make it a sustainable home.

This means it's all electric.

It has high levels of insulation, it has heat pumps for heating and cooling, water heating, all electric, high efficiency appliances, no gasoline, no fossil fuels.

And so that is an incredible opportunity for us, again, to lead by example.

Shalini, I have a question for you.

It's actually an email from Kate.

Kate says, define City of Rochester.

I had the same confusion when you did the water line lead testing hour.

Does the term city include adjacent urban suburbs, Irondequoit, Gates, beyond those two towns or is this strictly those dwellings who pay property taxes to the city of Rochester?

City of Rochester means Rochester, not the surrounding towns and the suburbs.

In terms of, you know, the municipalities definition and for other folks who might not be in in the area.

Jenna, what would you suggest?

Yeah, well, I can guarantee you in our area, the Clean Energy Hub serves the nine county region.

So if you're in Genesee County, if you're in Yates County, you are still part of our Finger Lakes community.

And those incentives that I was talking about, NYSERDA incentives, incentives from your utility companies and federal incentives are still often available to you.

And if you do live in a more rural area, you may also be eligible for USDA grants.

So that's what we tried to do at the Hub is listen to your biggest and most pressing priorities and say, okay, what can we do to both meet your clean energy needs, but also maybe just your quality of living needs?

So we look for ways to braid funding sources so that you can actually achieve the quality you're looking for in your home.

As we wrap up today's discussion on electrification and its pivotal role in combating climate change, I hope you've found inspiration in the insights shared by our guests.

Their expertise highlights not only the challenges we face, but also the tangible solutions within our reach.

Whether you're considering electrifying your home or advocating for sustainable practices in your community, or simply seeking to be more informed, remember that every step towards sustainability it counts.

The power to change lies within each of us.

I'm Jasmine Singer.

Until next time, keep making those environmental connections.