Moves are being made… moves that will push around about $67 billion in the climate space via the recently passed CHIPS and Science Act. This legislation is intended to encourage manufacturing efforts for zero-carbon technology and establish a federal office for clean-energy innovations. A fat chunk of these funds are earmarked for climate research, with a hard push toward zero-carbon information disbursement, and the build-out and advancement of industries around these technologies and ideas.
What does this mean? It means that there’s now a reason to put our backs into it when it comes to zero-carbon. It means it’s safe to turn the brains loose and start retooling some things that obviously aren’t suiting us any longer. Or, we could say, it’s okay for us to imagine again… because we need it. The problem we must solve now: keeping millions upon millions of people warm and cool in a world where the weather is getting wilder by the moment.
Electric Dreams
At this juncture, the understood objective is to get the entire United States off fossil fuel-powered heat and air… the whole thing. That’s our hefty task. Fortunately, we have some modern-day seers on the beat, and leading the way. An important part of this solution is changing up what we’re doing by retrofitting and installing electric heat pumps and solar panels where we can, to electrify and green our infrastructure as much as possible.
Our power infrastructure has served us well, exceedingly well, for along time. It has allowed us to flourish, and spawn new ways of life for Americans that have truly been the stuff of dreams. However, our world is changing. It’s more chaotic, and that chaos demands new ways to warm and cool the masses, protecting them from the elements… so, naturally, it makes sense that the electrification of low-income housing is on now on the table as a major viable solution.
If we want to see what this will look like in real-time, we need look no further than BlocPower, a Brooklyn-based company that has been in the space since 2014. The company recently delivered (ahead of schedule and under budget) the results of their completion of energy projects in over 1,200 buildings as part of urban clean energy efforts. Hard data is now showing us that participants are saving up to 40% on their energy bills every year.
How will such a thing work at scale? Glad you asked… BlocPower has that figured out. The way to make electrification affordable is by becoming so efficient at the process, that they could be thought about as the Amazon of the clean tech space. Which, as we know, is an effective method of driving down costs. The plan is to utilize machine learning to get the job done. If the “there’s not enough money in it” narrative is still banging around in anyone’s head, put it to rest.
Affordability Is Back In Style
The market for serving low-income families in the clean energy space is around the $5 trillion mark. The right policies are moving into position, through things like the research and development money in the CHIPS and Science Act for climate change, and domestic manufacturing is being incentivized. Electrifying low-income housing is now ready to be tackled by the private sector and average families. The way legislation is written, more capital is being provided for low-income household efforts.
Best of all, there’s lots and lots of potential for the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs for low-income and working families. Furthermore, since it’s the business of electrifying and decarbonizing buildings, people will actually want to do these jobs. We’re seeing that shift in the winds again where people are looking to do impactful work, not just grind themselves to the bone. Green jobs fit the bill, and we’re seeing people clamoring for them. This will help make that happen.
In our opinion, this is a fantastic opportunity. the timing is seemingly perfect. As we gander at our current power infrastructure, and reassess our current and future needs, we know we’re going to have to probably fly a little lower, try not to net the entire globe together into more and more unified structures prone to a single point of failure. As we’re seeing, that’s proving to be insufficient for our current needs. It’s not personal, it’s math.
When we talk about electrifying homes, we don’t just mean those that can afford it. This is going to be on a much larger scale, because it must. Expect to see it begin to manifest around you… if you haven’t already. We’ve all become jaded when it comes to greenwashing, that’s fair, but we can’t let that make us blind to any possibilities in the space, or the fact that we can reimagine what this looks like on the fly. Join us next time, we’ll have more of the news of tomorrow from the green tech space.