In the Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park, three organizations — nonprofit affordable housing developer MidPen Housing, local climate nonprofit Menlo Spark and the Association for Energy Affordability, a nonprofit specializing in energy efficient multifamily properties — teamed up to retrofit Willow Court, an affordable, multifamily housing building, with fully electric appliances. This retrofit is the first of its kind in San Mateo County, according to a draft case study of the project prepared by Menlo Spark.
In all six housing units within the Willow Court complex, which were originally constructed in 1992, all gas appliances, including water heaters, furnaces, washers, dryers and ranges were replaced with electric appliances and heat pumps to manage water heating and home heating. New, more efficient electric appliances, along with efficient LED lighting, were installed in the complex as part of this project as well.
Additionally, the building is supplied with power by Peninsula Clean Energy, which offers “100% clean energy,” that is either carbon-free, renewable or both from sources such as wind and solar.
Menlo Park’s director of sustainability, Rachael Londer, said that 43% of Menlo Park’s greenhouse gas emissions come from burning natural gas to power space heating, water heating and cooking appliances in local buildings.
“We don’t always have the ability to remove natural gas from the buildings we live and work in to take advantage of the 100% greenhouse gas free electricity provided by Peninsula Clean Energy,” she said. “The Willow Court project provides an example for how the community can come together to transform existing multifamily buildings across the city from gas guzzlers to clean energy homes for the health of our residents.”
Menlo Spark, in partnership with the Hewlett Foundation, provided MidPen housing with a $150,000 grant to cover a large portion of the upfront capital costs of retrofitting the building and removing all gas appliances.
“MidPen Housing is grateful to Menlo Spark and the Association for Energy Affordability for their collaboration on the full electrification of Willow Court,” said Nigel Felix, MidPen Housing’s associate asset manager of real estate transactions. “We hope that Willow Court’s retrofit will inspire similar work at affordable housing properties up and down the state.”
State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, called the electrification project “groundbreaking,” as it is the first existing multifamily property in the county to “provide a full suite of climate pollution reductions via healthy, clean, more efficient electric appliances.”
“Willow Court residents will benefit greatly from the significant air pollution reductions achieved by removing gas combustion from the property,” he said in a press release.
Menlo Spark is an independent environmental nonprofit focused on helping the city of Menlo Park reach carbon neutrality by 2030.
The draft case study prepared about the project by Menlo Spark states that once a building like Willow Court is fully electrified, it then becomes a good candidate for the installation of solar panels. Solar panels can further reduce utility bills for residents, increase the amount of power that comes from renewable sources and allow the building to “go off the grid” during power outages if energy storage is installed.
In the draft case study, Menlo Spark’s director of electrification, Angela Evans, also wrote that one of the most important findings from undertaking this electric retrofit was that the electrical panels on the home do not necessarily need to be upgraded to electrify the building.
“Despite the conventional wisdom of prior decades linking home electrification to costly, time consuming electrical panel upgrades, the ‘panel upgrade myth’ has now been successfully debunked,” Evans wrote in the draft case study. “With all new electric appliances, Willow Court’s electrical load calculations demonstrate a per housing unit load of 50 Amps.”
This would still leave room in the electrical panel’s capacity to install EV chargers and large solar arrays in the future, said Energy Engineer Tom Kabat in the draft case study.
Environmental justice
Evans said that the Belle Haven location for the nonprofit’s first electric retrofit project was chosen with environmental justice and equity goals in mind. Belle Haven was designated as an “underserved community” in the city’s recently adopted environmental justice element due to higher poverty rates, higher indoor air pollution, higher incidences of asthma and other diseases and the disproportionate burden of flooding and other climate hazards that residents of Belle Haven experience.
“Willow Court’s completion demonstrates Menlo Spark’s commitment to solving the climate crisis while prioritizing social justice,” said Evans. “Instead of leaving people behind, we want our Belle Haven community to be amongst the first to reap the benefits of a cleaner, healthier, more comfortable home.”
Surveys taken in support of the creation of the environmental justice element show that the Belle Haven neighborhood faces a much higher burden of heat-related illnesses compared to the rest of the city. While 51% of Belle Haven residents reported dealing with extreme indoor heat in their homes, 34% of respondents in the rest of Menlo Park said that extreme indoor temperatures were an issue.
The electric retrofit of Willow Court also included the installation of heat pumps, which provide both heating and air conditioning. The HVAC system retrofit also includes an air filtration system that will help to improve the indoor air quality at the complex.
“This air conditioning will enable crucial resilience (and air filtration for particulate matter) during increasingly frequent heat waves and poor air quality days due to wildfire smoke emergencies,” wrote Evans in the draft case study.
According to the draft case study, one challenge going forward for other affordable housing electrification projects is that there are “split incentives” between tenants and building owners.
“The split incentive, in which the building owner pays for energy efficiency and other upgrades while tenants pay the utility bills and reap the health and safety gains from gas removal, can decrease motivation for energy retrofits in tenant-occupied buildings,” wrote Evans in the draft case study.
Willow Court’s electrification was achieved through public subsidy and grant funds, which covered “almost all” upfront capital costs, according to Menlo Spark. Evans says that the Willow Court electrification is not a “one off thing” that cannot be replicated, as there are many other public funding opportunities coming up for other nonprofits and affordable housing owners to do something similar.
“There are two programs coming up that will also likely cover all or most if not all … upfront capital costs of low income/affordable multifamily housing electrification retrofits,” said Evans in an email to this news organization. “In other words, multifamily building owners aren’t likely to … need a Menlo Spark equivalent to do what we did for them, but we wished to get the ball moving and do this to create a meaningful precedent.”
Those two programs are California’s upcoming Equitable Building Decarbonization program, which is designed to create no- or low-upfront electrification retrofit costs for buildings occupied by low- and moderate-income residents, and the Silicon Valley Clean Energy Multifamily Retrofit program, which helps owners of deed-restricted affordable housing replace gas equipment with clean electric equipment.
For individual homeowners on the Peninsula, there are many other subsidy and incentive programs that exist to help aid the transition to electric appliances.
Menlo Park, in collaboration with Peninsula Clean Energy, is offering free air conditioners and electric appliances to income-qualified Menlo Park homeowners. Several other rebates and zero-interest loans for electric appliances are available through Peninsula Clean Energy.
Editor’s note: A sentence in the article was changed to better reflect the accurate list of gas appliances removed.
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“Belle Haven townhouses become first fully electrified multifamily buildings in San Mateo County”
Concerning the title: is that accurate? I suspect they’re the first multifamily buildings that were *retrofitted* to be fully electric. I thought the city made a law stipulating that all new construction had to be fully electric a few years ago. I’m not saying this isn’t newsworthy, but I am a bit skeptical that of the idea that there are no fully electric multi-family buildings. Actually, emphasizing this is a retrofit in the headline would help bring attention to this program, and inspire interest.
Hi Alan! Thank you so much for that catch, you are absolutely right. The title has been changed.
Eleanor – that makes sense. The article itself is well-written and interesting. 🙂
One of the ways these homes fit full electrification on their electric panels was simply to use the new large drum size “One and Done” combination (washing machine/heat pump dryer) machines that save effort, floorspace and panel capacity. This frees up the dryer circuit to be used for future EV charging or other electrification. This could be everyone’s easy step toward full electrification because it doesn’t require an electrician or contractor.
What was the total cost of the project (in addition to the $150,000 upfront cost)?