[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: All right, I think I'm gonna I'm going to get us started. So if our panelists here don't mind muting themselves, and I'll get the ball rolling. All right. Thank you everyone for joining us. My name is Yvette. I am a planner in the Office of Planning, Development and Sustainability. This event is hosted by Medford's Energy and Environment Committee and the Tufts Energy Group, and we'll be featuring a presentation from BlockPower, a clean heating tech company out of Brooklyn. Before I pass this off to our wonderful hosts, I want to go over some event logistics with you. You'll first hear from representatives from the Energy and Environment Committee in the Tufts Energy Group, and that will be followed by a presentation from BlockPower. A Q&A portion will follow the presentation. Now, there are a couple of ways to submit a question if you have any. At the bottom of your screen, you will see a Q&A button. This will look like two speech bubbles slightly overlapping with the letters Q&A beneath them. You can click on this and it'll pop up a window where you can submit a question, and you can do this at any time tonight. While I'm speaking, while our hosts are speaking during the presentation or during the Q&A portion, you're able to do that at any time. Um, the, another way to ask a question, you can raise your hand and you can do this. You can also do this anytime, but we won't be calling on people until the Q and a portion of, of this event. So during the Q and a portion, you can go ahead and raise your hand. There's a, there's a button for that too, at the bottom of your screen. Um, and it should have a hand, I think, and say, raise hand underneath it. And the way that'll work is, um, we'll call on you when it's your turn and you'll be given the option to unmute yourself so you could speak. If you're dialing in tonight, you can raise your hand by dialing star nine and you can also lower your hand by dialing star nine. So once again, there are a couple of different ways to ask questions. There's the Q and A button at the bottom of your screen. There's the raise your hand button at the bottom of your screen and star nine if you're listening on the phone. All right, so just really quick, we are recording this webinar and we will be posting it to Medford Community Media and to medfordenergy.org, our Go Green website. Again, that's medfordenergy.org. This event is not being broadcast live tonight, but we will have Medford Community Media replay this webinar at a later date. With that, I'd like to pass this off to Bob Payne from the Energy and Environment Committee. Thanks to everyone for joining us tonight. And Bob, I'll just get those slides up right now.
[Unidentified]: Bob, I think you are muted.
[Robert Paine]: Yes, you told me to mute and now I'll unmute myself. Thank you. I'm going to talk about the The functions of the Medford energy environment committee this is a collaboration. And the 3rd one 3rd annual one. Since 2020. Our committee and the tough synergy group. We can go on to the next slide. Our mission statement is to promote policies and actions that improve energy efficiency and courage conservation and increase the use of renewable energy to meet our present needs while considering future generations of the Medford community. Next slide please. Our committee works with the Medford office of energy and the environment to support the city's goals of basically energy independence and environmental stewardship. We have various talents on our committee, technical and consulting expertise that we donate to the city. We work pro bono and we organize energy and environmental related projects and events and programs to benefit the residents of Medford. And I already mentioned that we have a variety of expertise. For example, I'm a meteorologist, and I helped to have input into the wind turbine that was erected near the McGlynn School in 2009, for example. Next slide, please. And basically, here's our website. And we might have, you can probably just look us up on Facebook by searching Go Green Medford Energy Committee. And so there's a lot of content on the website and you can delve into it at your leisure if you're interested. I think now I'm going to pass it on to Jacqueline Dobonich who's the Vice President of the Tufts Energy Group.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hello everybody, as Bob said, my name is Jacqueline and I'm a senior at Tufts University and Vice President of Tufts Energy Group. So Tufts Energy Group is an undergraduate group on campus. So we work to promote renewable energy, both on and off campus at the Tufts community and the surrounding communities. There's some of the Events we do are attend conferences in the area, such as the MIT Energy Conference and the Tufts Energy Conference. We also participate in the organization of that. We host a lot of guest speakers. So we've had people from renewable energy careers, as well as professors at the university and other career professionals meet with our group members. as well as working on some hands-on projects. So in the past, we've done a bike-powered blender, as well as installing solar panels on campus, so a big range there. We also go on tours of local facilities, as well as host interesting discussions on campus and some other projects here and there, but this is the main activities we do. So if you have any questions about the group, sorry, go to the next slide. If you have any questions about the group or want to get involved with anything we do, feel free to contact us at any of these platforms, and we're happy to hear from you. Thank you.
[Robert Paine]: Let's see, Yvette, why don't you launch your poll at this time, and then we'll get back to this part of the introduction, the last part of the introduction.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thanks, Bob. And thanks, Jacqueline, we just like to get a get an idea of who who's with us tonight from our community. So I'm going to launch a quick poll, feel free to take it when you can. And it's just asking you basically, you know, if you're a student or from someone else from the community. Alright, launching it. Okay. Go ahead, Bob.
[Robert Paine]: Okay, I guess I could be a resident and a homeowner, I suppose, too. Multiple choice, okay. Anyway, let me get rid of this and talk about tonight's focus. It's basically bringing heat pumps to local communities and even conversation with Black Power. Black Power is a Black-owned Brooklyn-based climate technology company. And the presentation will discuss home electrification technologies such as heat pumps and why electrification is the way of the future for home heating and cooling as opposed to use of fossil fuels. Next slide. So the presentation will discuss how Massachusetts home and property owners can finance and implement these projects in existing buildings. Using both state and federal incentives and funding. Roots. And how the homeowners can move forward with this. How they can how they should do how they can plan to move forward with these these projects finding the right contractor like for will actually also discuss some of the musical project is they've been involved in that promote home electrification systems. Next slide, please. The two presenters, Craig, obviously, I got to make sure I get this right, Craig Altamos, sorry if I have the wrong pronunciation, but he's a Director of External Affairs in Massachusetts and co-leading the work in Massachusetts and New England. Prior to joining BlockPower, he served as the founding executive director of Better Future Project, the climate advocacy and organizing nonprofit based in Massachusetts. One more slide for us long he's a 10 year veteran in the energy industry. We're experiencing utilities commercial energy efficiency. Clean tech finance and operations he's currently serving as the general manager in the Northeast helping to expand operations in this region through partnerships business development and operational excellence. I believe that's the end of the introductory presentation.
[Unidentified]: Is that over to us then?
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thank you, Bob. Craig and Dennis, take it away.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: Great. Are you able to share the results, Paul, out of curiosity?
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Just curious to see who are at. Yeah, sure. We're 17% Tufts University students or community members. And you can choose multiple, so keep that in mind. 50% residents, and then 80% homeowners. Great.
[Unidentified]: A lot of homeowners in the audience, excellent. All righty, are people seeing this presentation here?
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, we can see it.
[Unidentified]: Great, thank you.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So this is the agenda of what we're hoping to cover this evening, first starting off with who is Block Power and what we do. Then moving on to talk a little bit about what electrification is and why we think electrification is important. Then moving on to how to finance electrification, next steps for homeowners, and next steps for members for the community of Medford and the camps of Tufts as a group. So BlockPower's mission is to make buildings smarter, greener, and healthier, or as our CEO calls it, turning buildings into Teslas. We do this by reducing fossil fuel consumption and pollution in building energy systems. And this is our founder and CEO Danelle Baird. He grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that had no heat. And the only way his family was able to warm their apartment in the winter was to turn on the oven at night and open the oven door. And his parents would do that, open the kitchen window to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning from hurting the family. And then they'd all retreat into the one bedroom of their apartment and no one was allowed to leave that bedroom until the next morning. And that was for all of Danelle's childhood basically growing up and coming out of that experience he appreciated. both how unfair that was and how that burden tended to fall on people who looked like him instead of people who looked like me and on lower income residents and committed himself to address the energy burden that exists. And as he learned more about climate change, made that his mission as well to really address climate change. And that's why we're all in on electrifying buildings and getting oil and gas out of building systems. So the way BlockPower operates, we have a customizable menu of building electrification programs and projects that we can do for communities. So we have BlockMaps, which is our software planning tool that allows cities, utilities, towns to get a really comprehensive understanding of the energy footprint of their buildings and what upgrade measures can do to reduce that footprint and how much it would cost to including to electrify every single building in the community and designing incentive programs and designing outreach campaigns with all that data. So we're very excited about and nearby Cambridge is the first Massachusetts client using block maps. We also have financing, where we've raised nearly $100 million from different sources that will allow us to finance building electrification projects. And the way our financing works is that we have a lease, where we tend to lease heat pumps, which is the main technology we use, which Dennis will be talking a bit more about, but really to enable electrification to happen without financing being a barrier. And then we have something that we like to call community-driven enablers, where We work on, among other things, workforce development programs where we train up people and the skills they need to do building electrification work, because we recognize that there's a shortage of skilled contractors who know how to do the type of work that we need to have done in very large numbers across the country. And we really focus that workforce development on underrepresented workers, ensuring a just transition. We also have, through our nonprofit, we have a Wi-Fi program where we help to connect underserved neighborhoods with the internet and bring them into the 21st century and all the internet has to offer. And then finally, part of our community engagement involves standing up community advisory boards, which really allow us to really build deep levels of trust within the community as we're working to help electrify the community and also hold us accountable to the community standards. This is a sampling of where we currently have have partnerships and projects up and running. So you see in Massachusetts, we're just starting some workforce development work here and getting started on some building electrification also New York City, New York State is where we are best known for having started in Brooklyn, and I think we are probably best known nationally for a partnership we have with the city of Ithaca to electrify every single building in the city of Ithaca by the year 2030, which is not too far away, thankfully. But also doing a lot of work in California, and as you can see, starting to work in other states as well. And I'm sure a year from now, there will be many more states filled in on this map. And here's just a sampling of some of the accolades that our company has been lucky enough, fortunate enough to earn. Fast Company ranked us as the fourth most innovative company in the world this year. Time Magazine listed us among the most 100 influential companies. CNBC, 42nd most disruptive startup in the world. And we are recognized as a technical advisor with the Department of Energy and helping to advise folks on behalf of the Department of Energy on building electrification. And so with that, I'm going to pass it over to Dennis for what is electrification?
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Greg. Can everybody see that? Let's go to the next slide here. So what is electrification and why do we care about it is what I'll be talking about for a little bit here. 30% of greenhouse gases come from buildings. And that's across the US, and it's potentially even higher across the world. And so what we're really looking to do is getting fossil fuels out of your home in terms of your heating space and your cooling spaces, heating hot water, your cooking, and everything else that you have going on. And so as we know here in Massachusetts and the New England region, There are plenty of fossil fuels in homes and we have old buildings and we have lots of work to do in terms of electrification so I'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like. The four C's are really where we see the why behind electrification. There are obvious reasons, and I'll share a little bit more about this in just a second, around climate protection. And I know most of the folks here are climate concerned individuals. So we're excited to explore that together. Comfort, as you drive around New England, you notice that there, are tons of window AC units or a lot of apartments and homes that have never had cooling and as our climate gets warmer. Comfort is is a big deal clean air, as we all know, with the season that we're coming out of. with COVID and other things is also really important. So we believe there's electrification benefits for clean air as well. And so you get simultaneous heating, cooling, and you get more clean air in your home. Cancer prevention, we're really talking about that clean air. A lot of studies out there right now about getting rid of your gas stove and how that makes a big impact in your kitchen air quality. And then ultimately, we'd like to see cost cutting and energy savings as a major benefit as well. And I'll talk a little bit more about how that may or may not be happening in Massachusetts. So here are the most common existing systems we run into. Obviously, central boilers and heating systems, window ACs, gas ranges, gas hot water heaters. And we want to rip all these things out. and replace them with potentially heat pumps. Heat pumps have been thrown out there quite a bit. Folks are starting to understand the benefits and opportunities with heat pumps and just to give some background on what a heat pump is. I'll show on the next slide here but the heat pump was invented way back in 1856. And so it's been around for a very long time. simultaneously is able to switch between cooling and heating in one unit to keep the temperature correct in your building. And so we're really excited to talk about the technology advances with heat pumps and where it's headed. So you can go to the next slide there, Craig. Thanks. So how does it work? We have a cooling mode. which the outer unit is used as the condenser, and the inner unit is the evaporator. And then the inverse, we have the evaporator and condenser swapped. And so you may have seen this in a lot of other places in the world, like Central and South America, or I would say East Asia. This has been a technology that's been around forever. And the concerns usually for people when we talk about heat pumps are, what about this bottom section? What about winter? Are we going to be able to heat our homes when it's negative 10 degrees here in New England? And what's going to happen? Are we going to be able to pull in enough warm air out of that negative 10 to heat our homes? And is it going to be able to keep up with the chilling cold? The answer is yes. In the last three to five years, we've seen major advances in heat pump technology. And a lot of the heat pumps that we're installing today are actually rated for up to negative 15 or negative 30. And the Northeast region, as well as the Midwest, folks have been dumping a lot of R&D into how heat pumps are going to work in these parts of the country, because we know there are so many benefits. And so we've seen that technology come forward, and we expect even more in the next three to five years, technological advances from energy efficiency, heating, cooling, and being able to withstand extreme temperatures. On the next page here, I'll talk about a quick study in BC, British Columbia. Canada actually has one of the cleanest grids in the world. And this study was done in British Columbia about heat pumps and the effect they make on the climate. So they're looking at the alternatives of oil and gas for homes. And they're seeing that compared to oil, it's about 1% of CO2 emissions. compared to a house heated from oil. That's a big deal. Now, there are some challenges here with the last C, which is the cost, which may come up in the questions later. We can get to it then, but I'll just say the excitement at BlockPower is that the The triple bottom line of saving the planet, saving people money, and giving them ultimately a better experience in their home is what we're going after and it's a vision that we see coming to fruition today, and going to be much more clear in the years to come, especially with the investment in the infrastructure. That's all I'll say about heat pumps for now. I'll jump to one other piece before I hand it back to Craig, which is when we talk about electrification and turning buildings into Teslas, we're not just talking about the heating and cooling systems. While that is really important and that's one of the most central ways that we're burning fossil fuels inside of our homes, There are other ways too. So we're looking at on the left side, you're getting what is pretty common now in some new construction, which is a tankless water heater, all powered by electric, where you can have a tanked water heater, that is a heat pump hot water heater, and replace that for your natural gas burning hot water heater. There's also geothermal, which is another form of heat pump. that is really exciting and becoming more and more accessible by digging boreholes into the ground and pulling heating and cooling from the earth. So very similar to heat pump technology, just making some more holes in your backyard. And then, of course, for cooking, I just recently went to an induction range in my house. Thank you, Mass Save, for the generous incentive. And I haven't missed a beat. I love it. It's been excellent. And we can move away from having a gas stove, a gas range in my home and in yours as well. And then, of course, solar panels. We want to put as much solar, wind, renewable energy out there as much as possible. So those are some other electrification opportunities.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: And I think that comes back to me on how we pay for all of this. So first off, I think Massachusetts has one of, if not the most, generous rebate systems and incentive systems in the country through MassSave. Some of the things that you can look forward to if you're pursuing electrification of your home. If you do the whole house heat pumps on heat pumps, there's a $10,000 rebate. If you do a partial house rebate, you can get up to $1,250 per ton, up to $10,000 for doing part of your home over to heat pumps. There's also heat loans that are available, which are seven-year, 0% interest loans that can go up to $25,000 presently, and that number is set to increase pretty soon as I understand it. And then if you're doing other things like insulation, in your home, which is strongly recommended. Actually, I think it required to get the whole house rebate. 75% of the cost of installation are covered. And these are all for market rate customers, for income eligible customers. 100% of switching over to heat pumps and 100% of the cost of insulation are covered by MassAve, which are the, you know, fees that are, MassAve is funded by fees that you pay in your utility bills. So it's taking advantage of these incentives and rebates is really getting your money's worth for money that you and all of the other rate payers in our state are contributing to their monthly energy bills. We also, as folks know, just passed a very exciting climate bill called the Inflation Reduction Act recently through Congress, which has a whole suite of programs. We're going to talk about a couple of them. But just to give you a sense of the scope, it's funding electrification upgrades in low and moderate income communities, home energy retrofits, EPOM installations, also incentivizing newly constructed homes, and then also working on commercial commercial real estate. We're going to zero in on just three three chunks of this, the homes, the home energy performance based rebates, HERA, the high efficiency electric home rebate program, and then a tax credit. And just to speak of the tax credit, it's a fairly state that's kind of the simplest, that provides a tax credit of up to 30% from the cost of electrification projects up to $3,200 per year. And that annual credit limit resets every year. So if you switch your heating system over to heat pumps one year. And then the next year you get, you know, an electric heat pump, hot water system. You could get a whole new up to $3,200 credit on your taxes each year, which you're doing those as separate projects. To speak a little bit more about HERA. So this is really targeted at low and moderate income residents. And unlike the Tax credit we talked about, which is, because it's a tax credit, it's unlimited. This is a grant or a rebate. So there's a finite amount of money that each state gets. Massachusetts will get $72 million to pass out. And this is really targeted at, again, households who are between 80% and 150% of area median income. But at the peak, there's a $14,000 maximum rebate that a resident can receive from HERA. And again, this is targeting both single family and multifamily, where at least half of the residents are low and moderate income. And you can see how much you get off of heat pumps and hot water, heat pump hot water and clothes dryers and so on down the row here. And then homes, is a program that serves both market rate and low and moderate income residents. Massachusetts is getting almost identical amount of money here, $73 million to disperse. And so for both of these programs, for HOMES and HERA, our state energy office, the Department of Energy Resources, is ultimately going to be putting out regulations around exactly how this money is going to be distributed. They're still waiting for federal guidance from the Federal Department of Energy on how to create those regulations. So there's not perfect clarity on how this will all work out. But this is our best understanding of the law, which is basically the more energy that you save, the more money you'll be able to get back from homes. And then finally, we do want to put in the plug for our own lease that we offer consumers, which we do a 15-year lease. That's how we finance heat pumps. So you don't buy the heat pumps from us. You lease them, which means we own the system and we cover the operations and maintenance of it. Your average heat pump gets a 10-year warranty from the manufacturer. We extend that warranty to the full 15-year period of the lease, and we guarantee performance over that 15-year time span. We have two maintenance visits per year that are scheduled. And if we need to come more frequently than that because of any issues with technology, we will do that. And this lease was really designed with low and moderate income residents in mind. It's a zero money down lease. We can build into the lease deferred maintenance costs. So people have to address now tube wiring or mold or asbestos or a leaky roof in order to electrify their home. We can do that work up front for free. and build in the cost of that work over the 15 years as part of the lease. And finally, we don't put a lien on the building. So there's no risk for a homeowner that if they don't hit a monthly payment, they're going to lose their home. We make no claim on the home as collateral. And then I'll kick it over to Dennis to talk more about next steps for homeowners.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Craig. All of that is fantastic and I think everybody wants to get those rebates and electrify and reduce their costs and see greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The question now is what do I do if I want to heat pump or what do I do if I want to electrify my home? So building electrification I should maybe change the slide to is a complex process, not can be. You have to work with all these different groups as the building owner or homeowner to figure all these different pieces out. You've got the government and utility incentives, as well as permitting, planning and engineering, evaluations, energy studies, assessments. You've got construction and contractors that you've got to work with and find. You're going to buy, lease, finance the equipment. you're not only gonna talk to the manufacturer, you're probably gonna be in contact with some sort of lender or financer, and then potentially connect all those pieces together with broadband access. And so connect those to the cloud to make sure they all work and get operations and maintenance updates. All of that is something that you as the homeowner would have to potentially manage yourself. And on top of everything else you have going on in life, it's a big challenge. So we see that, and we know that this process, while laid out here in four steps, could be very straightforward. But there are a lot of barriers to this process. One is time. And the other main one we see is just competency around what you're looking for and how to get it done. when you're going through the scope, and you're finding contractors, and then you're designing the system, and then you're actually getting the system online, it comes with many challenges. You're managing multiple parties, and you're confirming a lot of different pieces that you've potentially never done before. And so BlockPower decided to take all that complication on, and to Craig's point at the top of the presentation, Because we are so focused on low and moderate income neighborhoods and those who maybe are disadvantaged or maybe not as focused on by these incentive programs, we decided to step in between there. And so BlockPower inserts themselves in this complex process to make it a turnkey solution. So we do all the planning and engineering, construction, contracting, equipment purchasing, financing, lending, broadband access if necessary, and government utility incentives and permits. So you hire BlockPower as your one-stop shop, and we become the experts and consultants for you to get all this done. You're a project manager, you're a contract manager, so on and so forth. And really, on top of that, focused on delivering a great product for you and a system that will last as long as least and hopefully beyond for the comfort of your home. And so there are things that are not on here, like our tools, our tech tools and our kind of acumen around how to engage with communities. But all in all, we're looking at a turnkey solution.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Dennis. And so I'll be talking about next steps for community campus, but very happy to go back to the earlier slide for folks who want to do it themselves if people have questions about that and recommendations on the process. So from the quick research I did, it looks like the city of Medford Building is responsible for about 66%, almost 2 thirds of emissions. And Medford does have a strategy of building electrification strategy 2.1 to provide tools and resources to support fuel switching and energy efficiency retrofits. With Tufts, natural gas burn on campus is responsible for 42% of campus emissions in 2019. Tufts had a lot of things, a lot of commitments they've signed on the website, but I was not able to find any specific strategy about building electrification, so it's quite possible they have one, and I just didn't see it on the interwebs. But yeah, just wanted to give a sense as to what Medford and Tufts' current situation is. And as folks are thinking about as a community, you know, how one might move forward, we really recommend as a first step setting a building electrification goal or goals. So one clear step would be to say that we're not going to put, not allow any new gas hookups in any new buildings that come online. You know, that's I think always one of the safest bets when you're in a hole, stop digging, right? So this is stopping making the problem worse by saying for new buildings, we're not going to allow them to have gas in these new buildings as they come online. 10 communities were allowed via the legislation that passed the state legislature this past summer. In theory, 10 communities will be allowed to undertake a pilot program to do just that, to ban new gas hookups in their communities. Which 10 communities and how exactly that's going to work out is being worked out still. It's possible that they may ultimately allow more than 10 communities. I think it's a matter of when, not if, but they may start even allowing more than 10 communities. they haven't already could get on that waiting list. But then really, that's the easy part, right? It's safe for the new buildings. We're not going to do this when you have a huge existing building stock that has gas and oil already in those systems. And so we really recommend for both the campus and for the city to think about, do we want to say by, for instance, the year 2030, we're going to electrify a certain percentage of our buildings or a certain number of our buildings? And we're working with communities that are both looking at a percentage number or saying, we're going to take on 1,000 buildings by 2030. The most audacious or the most comprehensive way to do this is to set a goal of saying we're going to electrify all of our buildings by this year. The fastest timeline that are on our radar are saying we're going to electrify all of our buildings by 2030, which both Ithaca, New York, and Menlo Park, California have committed to do and have shown a lot of power to work with them in partnership around. A recommended but not necessary step is finding and building electrification partner, which Black Power is, of course, happy to be considered to help you think through how to do this. But, you know, some may choose to do it on their own. And that's, you know, the climate needs us all to stretch ourselves. So more power to you if you want to take that path. And then the third step is to create a plan to do that. As we referenced, our mapping software is a particularly helpful way to jumpstart such planning. Some may choose to make make a plan before they find building electrification partner. I think that's wise in some ways and more challenging in other ways. But either way, we stand ready to assist. But also, again, not trying to push our services too hard here. So if people want to charge on their own, that's what the climate needs. So however it gets done, we want to make sure that the buildings are getting electrified. And finally, just a small note that we are also looking for a small number of universities that are looking to engage both their campus and their local community in ambitious decarbonization goals. Our CEO has a vision of 10 universities around the country that are really, really charging full speed ahead with building decarbonization. So if folks connected from Tufts are interested in learning more about that, please feel free to reach out to us. share some early seeds on that idea. Again, just as I mentioned, I think one particularly helpful step is our block map software, which we would be happy to make available to the city of Medford at a cost, if that's something that folks desire. And again, it's a really, really helpful building visualization tool that allows you to understand the full scope of the building stack in Medford or any other community. And then really design program that meets your goals around environmental justice or cost savings and building electrification. And also we have a tool, a companion tool for building owners, our incident building report. But with that, yeah, we'd love to pivot to the question and answer session. We've got a number there. And Bob, are you all handling facilitating that or?
[Robert Paine]: This is Bob Payne. There was a question, you mentioned costs early on and how does the cost of a heat pump system compare to current fossil fuel systems? I don't know if you were going to get back to that.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so. It's in terms of, I honestly don't know how much a new fossil fuel system costs these days, because I'm not interested in buying one and we don't serve customers who are. We'll say that for an average 2,000 square foot home, if you do a multi-split system, that's in the $25,000 to $35,000 range is our estimate. A duct, if you already have ducts in your home, For a similar size home, the cost could be 30% to 50% less expensive than that if you could tap into existing central air ducts that you already have online, or even, I think, forest heat air as well. And a ground source heat pump, if folks are looking to do that, is more in the $30,000 to $50,000 range. So a lot of that depends on the geology of your area. And again, we talked about the incentives. So that's the pre-incentive cost. So obviously in Massachusetts, again, if you do the whole home, you're talking taking $10,000 off from the top and then with all the additional incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act on top of that. But Dennis, do you want to add to that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll just add that we get these questions pretty often. The challenge with answering them, we're not skirting around them because they don't want to answer them. The challenge is that we have, there are old homes in this region of the country that need more than just a rip and replacement of their heating and cooling system engine, if you will. There is air sealing that needs to be done. There's insulation that needs to be done. And if anybody has done any home projects or construction, the minute you start opening anything up, you always find other things that potentially have maintenance issues or other challenges for ripping and replacing. And so that is why we designed our, personally for BlockPower, that's why we designed our lease product, because within that lease, you're able to actually finance all of those other things that I'm talking about, whether it's replacing old wiring or doing insulation or other pieces to be able to get your electrification in your home, we can roll that into the lease and make it one monthly lower payment. And so the price of heat pumps has gone down significantly and we foresee it continuing to go down. And I think the incentives are making it very lucrative to where it's potentially comparing apples to apples when it comes to cost for natural gas or oil systems.
[Robert Paine]: What about the ongoing, let's say you get the system installed, what is the ongoing cost of just supplying the heating and cooling? Of course, I have a house, for example, it's gas-fired boiler, steam radiators, no cooling except for in-window air condition, so I really sweat during the summer. And they have steam radiators in the winter, but is it would I save money? Obviously, I'd be more comfortable in the summer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I can answer that. So I'll say you'll save energy, but depending on what rates you're on and depending on what time of year and how much energy you're using, if you decide to just because you can, Bob, if you decide to cool your house to 65 degrees all summer, I'll tell you, you definitely won't save money. And you'll save money by sweating a little bit more in the summer. And so it really depends on a case-to-case basis, whether you will see clear, significant financial savings. We do project on most of our projects a clear energy savings to make the switch to electric.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great, thanks guys. Bob, if you don't mind, I'm going to ask a few from, we've gotten some really great questions in the Q&A. All right. So first question for you guys, with the newer heat pumps that can handle heating when temperatures are below negative 10 degrees, would one also need a secondary backup heat system?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: I can answer this part, Dennis. So, you know, I think it's really what you want to optimize, right? If you want to optimize absolutely having heat, whether or not the power goes out, then I think, you know, there could be some wisdom to keeping a gas system online in your house. That does mean you've got the starter light kind of always on and ready to go, and you're still burning a low level of fossil fuels in your home, and you're still leaking a small level fossil fuels in your home. But if the power goes out and a really cold day, you're going to be pretty well guaranteed to still have a heating system. If instead you want to optimize climate impacts and health of your family and take the risk on not having heat if there's a big storm and the power goes out, then I would say you would want to remove the system. So it's really a values choice and what you want to prioritize. Again, I think that the health impact studies that I've seen so far are much more about the harms of cooking with gas in your kitchen, which is a place that you tend to spend a lot more time in than the health impacts of burning fossil fuels in your basement, which people don't tend to usually hang out next to the boiler or their furnace for hours on end. But that stuff is in your home. And I think that there's a health advantage of getting that out of your home. But again, when we're on the electric system, unless you also invest in a battery storage system, which some folks have the ability to do and may choose to do, you might want to maximize that system for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll just add, there are potentially incentives or programs that will pay you to get those fossil fuels out of your house completely. And so I would explore those depending on where you live and what that looks like.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Thanks. And then next question, what is involved in the house as far as installation? Question is, do they need to go into all of the rooms and put in tubes or anything else?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So again, this depends on what kind of system you wanna have. If you already have duct work in your house, then they can just tap right into that. And so you're switching out, basically like the equipment that you have air conditioning, your central AC represents basically gets swapped out for very similar looking equipment that is now a heat pump. If you're doing mini splits instead, then in every room you have kind of a large box that would be mounted onto the wall, not in every room, but in every room you want to have heat pumps circulating air through. You would have a mini split system that would go there. But yeah, Dennis, I know you also have recently done this. I don't know if you want to add to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, again, it just depends. Depends on if there's a backup in the house, if there's not. And like I mentioned earlier, a lot of different pieces go into making sure that if we do replace a system with heat pumps, we're making sure that they're going to work as effectively as possible. So upgrading wiring, insulation, weatherization, other things.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. Great. And what happens when when the lease ends? Who owns the equipment after that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great question. The lease ends and we actually hand the equipment over to the homeowner. And so there's a There's more details in the lease than that, but more or less it becomes the equipment owned by the homeowner. And one of the things that we are working on, because technology is advancing so much, personally at BlockPower, is whether there will be upgrade options in that lease to where you could upgrade to potentially new technology, so you're not locked into the same thing for 15 years if you want to upgrade to something that just came out, there's new opportunities that we see out there to save you energy and to save greenhouse gas emissions.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great. And we have a question related to the mass save incentives. Are they going to continue in 2023 at the same rate and the IRS tax credits would start for systems installed in 2023? Correct? Yes.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So starting January 1st, 2023, the tax credits start. And yes, you can layer them on top of the $10,000 mass save incentive. It's possible that that incentive will change as the IRA comes online, but at present, all signs point to it remaining. But yeah, they can definitely be layered on top of each other.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great, thank you. And I'm still talking about MassSave. Someone had a question here about if they know someone who has promised the MassSave rebate and has never gotten it, despite much effort to send them information. Have you run into this? Do you have any advice for that person?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: I have not personally run into this, but I mean, I think that the first step I would say would be to call the contractor that obviously did the work. I'm sure that you've probably been in touch with them more times than you can count. But I think if they're not doing what they need to do to get you that, then I would say call your utility. And if that doesn't work, I would say call your state legislator, your state rep, or your state senator, and get them on the case and explain to them what happened. And I think folks getting a call from an elected official or even someone on their staff, I think it would be a pretty big escalation. They would hopefully turn their attention to that more readily.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great. And going back to questions about a lease, what happens if you sell the house before the end of the lease?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So the lease has a buyout. if you're selling the home, but it's also transferable. So depending on the preference of the seller, we can go either way.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great. All right. And just a couple more before I turn it over to our panelists, who I know are bursting with questions. attendee here writes, I have an old house with a very old gas boiler and forced hot water radiators. So far, the contractors I have talked to seem to indicate that I need to install a mini split in each room, which would take up a lot of space in rooms that already have the giant radiators. It seems super expensive and intimidating to consider doing this, which would require holes and walls all over with a new build that it seems easy. Do you have solutions to streamline and deal with these issues?
[SPEAKER_02]: Greg?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, we are not magicians, unfortunately. So yeah, I mean, again, having hot water radiators in every room is also, I think, has historically been an imposition. And yeah, I mean, the nice thing is that the mini splits are on the wall, so they don't take up floor space. You can have them above a couch. You can have them above a dresser. You can have them above a bed. So it doesn't interfere with furniture in the same way that radiators tend to do. But at the end of the day, if you want to heat your home, there is equipment that needs to be present. I think another option would be to build a ducted system. That obviously has a lot of costs involved if you don't already have ducts in your house to build out ducts, but that would certainly be an option to consider. But again, I think that becomes a much more invasive process. folks being in your home for a lot longer to do that, to building out the ducted system. Unfortunately, I don't know there's an easy fix for it. I've heard talk about in the medium term, there may be ways to boil that water with heat pumps and to use existing radiator technology. But I think that's a pretty decent time away from being a commercialized technology. So I personally, I do have radiators. I'm planning to get heat pumps pretty soon. I'm not planning to wait for that.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. And one more for you guys before I send it over to Bob and Paul and other committee members. One person writes, OK, I'm a homeowner and I'm convinced. If you could give this person one next step, what would it be for them to get started?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's a little bit of a softball. You could call BlockPower and inquire, or I should say, go to our website, inquire right on there, put in your info, and somebody will reach out to you. And I think I saw another question, or maybe we didn't say it earlier, BlockPower works with MassSave and partners with all the great energy services providers in Massachusetts to really support all the great work that's going on. Craig was talking about the financing and some other things. And so MassSave is a great place to start to look for resources as well.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: All right, thank you. At this point, I'll invite Bob to come and ask any other questions. And I know Paul, who is also an Energy and Environment Committee member, has a lot of questions that he's been so kind to collect from others. So Paul, feel free to chime in as well.
[Robert Paine]: Bob, I'll just ask one more question, and then I'll turn it over to Paul and others. Craig, do you actually work with individual homeowners in Massachusetts yet for your lease program?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead, Craig. Well, so this has been a topic of live discussion within our company. The short answer is probably that, yeah, I think our CEO has made it clear that it's his desire that we operate in the single family market. We have really been focusing on multifamily homes. That has been our bread and butter, but I think we're open to doing single families. We plan to do single families, but I think It's a question of when and how we kick that off. So I think there are folks here who really want to be on the leading edge of working with block powers, a single family home, that maybe you'd be one of our very first steps.
[Robert Paine]: OK. Paul, Tez, why don't you ask some of your questions at this time?
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, hi. Thanks so much for your time and effort in putting this in. Very, very interesting stuff. Very compelling story from your CEO. And very much appreciate your time for being here. So I just wanted to really sort of focus on what this means for the homeowner. How would you, like, how would you give, can you possibly in any way provide an example of percentage of savings on an utility bill that a homeowner would get? Is that something that is feasible right now or are there dependencies or whatever? But if you can just ballpark that, It would be very good, I think, for homeowners to know that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll say if we projected over 10 to 15 years, which is what we normally do, you could see 20 to 40 percent utility bill savings. You're going to see that in energy savings. A couple of factors there. The grid is going to get cleaner and more affordable. So electricity prices are going to go down. Oil and natural gas prices are going to go up. over time. And so we're projecting against those as well as layering in, I think somebody said that they were in climate or weather, I can't remember what it was, but we're layering in projections on how the climate is going to be impacted in the future by the current level of greenhouse gas emissions and how hot and warm it's going to get, and cold in the winter it's going to get in the Massachusetts area. And so we expect to see savings. And it may not come tomorrow if you switch to heat pump. But over 10 to 15 years, you should see 20%, if not closer to 40%.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: OK. So these are long-term savings. And residents should expect to see those long-term savings in their utility bills. And so I guess the issue comes down to low-income people and moderate-income people who can't really see any kind of increase in their utility bills. As you probably know, National Grid sent out a notice saying that we could expect somewhere close to 60% increase in utility bills. So is there some mechanism to alleviate that from your point of view for homeowners by switching to these energy saving mechanisms that you're proposing?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: I mean, unfortunately, both the price of gas and electricity are rising. And as I understand it, the price of electricity presently is rising higher percentage-wise than the price of gas. So our systems do run on electricity. So again, we can't wave a magic wand and limit those costs. But the nice thing is that residents can, unlike market rate customers, can get these upgrades for 100% for free. And again, I think if you're pairing electrification with insulation work, particularly if you, you know, lower income homes are more likely to have issues of deferred maintenance where they may not have good insulation, insulation again 100% paid for, If you do insulate your home, that definitely lowers your energy costs and lowers your utility bills. And pairing those two things, you know, might well get you into actually lower utility bill territory presently. And again, I think when Dennis is talking about saving 20 to 40%, that's including the cost of your lease as part of the, you know, you know, what you're paying out over the 15 years to the energy. So when we take that equivalent payments out for folks, you know, I think it comes much quicker, the savings for people. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, unfortunately, like energy of any type is going to be a burden on low income people. And, you know, I think we have some government programs to assist with that, but I think for some folks, they are not sufficient.
[Robert Paine]: Yeah. Okay, just to interject, we have a municipal aggregation set up with in Medford, which helps the electrical bills. So that is, we fortunately have that system in place.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Yep. Yep. Thanks. Thanks so much for that. So, so are you, I guess, some of the questions that I have from from our committee is that are you proposing a relationship with the city of Medford? Do you have in place, you know, relationships with city organizations, city officials in other places? Do you work with Mass Save? do you work through Mass Save? Or is there some sort of synergy there? You know, just just just ask.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So yes, it is. Well, so I would say we're not proposing a specific partnership with Medford. I think we would be eager to discuss what your city's needs are and how we might meet them. But We have a customizable menu of what a partnership can look like. And that's literally runs the gamut from partnering with cities to just sell them our software or sell them our software and electrify five buildings together as a pilot program to a partnership where we're saying we're going to electrify every single building in your city in the next eight years. So I think what we are not proposing anything particular to Medford, but I think we would be delighted to have a conversation with you all about how we can support your goals or help you support designing and defining your goals and then executing them. And yes, to MassSave, we work through and with MassSave. And so again, any work we do, the MassSave incentives are built into those project costs and used to lower project costs in our end.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: So I guess I would, I mean, given your, your experience in this energy efficiency business. What is really the primary step that a homeowner can take to save energy? You come in and make an assessment with residents and whatnot. What do you think would be a primary thing that a homeowner can do on their own, for instance, prior to having heat pumps put in and all that stuff. If you can expand on that, it would be fantastic.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So do you mean what they can do in terms of like construction work or what they can do in terms of lifestyle changes? I'm not sure I'm fully capturing.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Oh, no, lifestyle changes or just adding things that a homeowner can do on their own. What would you suggest? You mentioned airflow in a house. Is there some ways that you can propose mitigation of that? Hello?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I'll take a crack at this. I think this may answer your question. For homeowners specifically, there are steps you could take to just reduce your overall consumption by making sure your insulated, air sealed systems you have are working properly. they're maintained, so on and so forth, to reduce your consumption. That's one side of the equation that we generally are encouraging. And then beyond that, because a lot of folks who are climate concerned or very aware of their consumption, we're telling folks, go explore these solutions. There are incentives out there. There are opportunities out there. And those things are available today. And so my greatest piece of advice is I talk to friends and family about this, to our homeowners in the area, is generally just please do not replace a dying fossil fuel system with another fossil fuel system. Come talk to me next, or come talk to somebody first.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure, sure. Thank you. Thanks very much.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Gaston looks like he has his hand up.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, hi. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I do have a couple of questions. So the first one is that I just did a quick search, and I found an article on Green Building Advisor that there seem to be air to water heat pump retrofits that you can do. I didn't read the whole article, it's pretty long and quite technical, but it seems, so I don't know what the cost would be of that, but it seems that they're available. And this sounds kind of an interesting proposition for our area, given that I believe that most houses have radiators, either steam or water. And to me, you know, the idea, what would happen to the radiators if I actually put a forced air system? And the idea of actually removing them all, removing all the pipes and things like that basically means that I have to open all the walls in my house. So it's something that I personally, I'm kind of not willing to do. So I was wondering whether, you know, then having an air to water heat pump where, you know, I can sort of reuse the radiators, it's something that looks a little bit more enticing. Now, however, If I do that, then I still would need some other system to pull down the house, if I decide to go that route as well. So yeah, I don't know. I am kind of with the same problem. And I was also wondering between the duct versus duct lift. So I did a little bit of research on this. And for the duct system, where I think it would be better for, in my case, the floor where I have all the rooms, so I can avoid having, you know, a mini-flip in each of the rooms. It seems that you also need a lot of clearance in the room. So for if your rooms are in the second floor and then you have the attic upstairs, it's actually kind of convenient because you can put all the ducts in the attic. But then what would happen, for example, in the first floor where, you know, you either have to put them in the basement or if the basement has like, you know, you can actually stand on it, but then it's, let's say like seven feet high, then you would actually lose a lot of height there. So I was wondering, you know, so for an old house, if you're not planning on sort of redoing your house completely, then what is the optimal way to sort of reuse some of the stuff that you have, in particular the radiators, and make the most efficient use of the space that you currently have in your house?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll try to distill that down. a little bit to just kind of give our thoughts on it. This is why this conversation is really important and this is why the conversations we're having with many different municipalities across the state and across the country and many concerned climate energy groups are talking about this is because While the technology is now available to put in heat pumps and other things like you mentioned, the cost is a huge barrier and the current existing infrastructure is a big barrier. If the goal is to have the least impact in terms of how much greenhouse gas emissions you emit, we could propose the most optimal solutions. If the goal is to have the least construction, there are other solutions like you're mentioning. out there that are not as commercialized. And so it really depends on the individual homeowner and the goals and then the budget to be frank. And we're really hoping that where there is a gap in the budget or the ability to spend incentives and programs like the IRA that is gonna be rolled out federally can help close the gap and make it a no brainer for folks to do the right thing.
[Gaston Fiore]: OK, and then two quick questions that are left. So the second one is, in terms of maintenance costs, so I also do have a steam boiler, as Bob has. And then the maintenance cost of my steam boiler is pretty much minimal. So I know that you mentioned that for the heat pump, it's actually baked into the lease. But so what's the average maintenance cost annually for, say, like an average size system heat pump?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: I think that's around three to five hundred dollars. It is for, you know, a 2,000 square foot home that has two outdoor heat pumps. Again, Block Power's lease, that's zero dollars on top of the lease that's built in. But I think, I guess to get back to your earlier question, I do want to So I skimmed through the article you sent, just to name it, it was a mechanical engineer who undertook the project on his own. And again, I did not mention the cost involved. So again, I think it's in theory doable, but it doesn't mean it's commercially viable. viable yet, unfortunately, particularly at a cost folks are reasonably willing to pay. But the other thing you referenced, the need to still have AC after this. And I think that's something really important is that right now, New England is an area that is much more of a heating state than a cooling state. But unfortunately, as climate change gets worse, that's going to change. And we're actually going to have more cooling days in Massachusetts than heating days. And your air conditioning system is going to become more important than your heating system in terms of maintaining the comfort and livability of your home. And so again, I think taking the long-term view of investing in a system that allows you to do both, I do think it is a prudent move.
[Gaston Fiore]: OK, and the last question, I think it wasn't asked. So in terms of trying to, you know, going into all electrical for the whole city. So Medford is about 45% people who rent. So what's the, what's, how is BlockPower addressing landlords in the sense of what kind of incentives are landlords, can landlords get to sort of electrify the houses that they rent out? I mean, not only would that be better for the people that rent it, but then also we need those houses also to switch to electrical eventually.
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So all of the incentives that we referenced in terms of $10,000 rebate from Mass Save, the heat loans that are out there, those are all true for landlords as well as for homeowners. And again, if you're a landowner who has over half of your residents the residents, the tenants are below the relevant area median income level, then that can be 100% paid for by MassAve. And the federal government also similarly is looking to incentivize both homeowners and landlords as we're doing this electrification work. But then as a company, BlockPower, again, CEO was himself a tenant in a large apartment building and that's definitely a customer base that we are looking to serve our tenants and renters. And yeah, it's, I'll be lying, be lying if so it's always easy to persuade landlords to undertake these projects. that there are things you can do. And I think there are certain types of landlords that are more likely to sign up than others. And in terms of, again, as we're looking to target our outreach, those are the types of landlords we wanna be reaching out to. To start, and again, this is a multi-year, multi-step process. And so go with those who are gonna be easiest to get first as the early adopters and go on from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and our strategy for that for block power historically has been. deep community engagement, understanding who the landlords are, what's their involvement in the community, how do we make their lives easier potentially with our lease and covering O&M like Craig was talking about. But it really does take a huge effort by everybody involved to educate, to incentivize and to get folks to make that switch. Yeah, we haven't, Unfortunately, we haven't created some magical program that gives landlords a bunch of extra money and solves all of the challenges yet. We're working on it, though.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great. Thanks, guys. I think in the last 5 to 10 minutes here, I have two more questions that came in over email from a resident. And I'll package that together. I think they'll be fairly quick for you. And then for the last few minutes, I'll any other committee members or ask any remaining questions that they have. But the resident who sent in a list of questions, there is some interest in knowing where the T-Pump technology is manufactured, whether that's in the United States or somewhere else. And then also, if someone was going to have this installed at their home, how long would it take for that work to be completed?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: I honestly don't know where the heat pumps that we source are made. We do have direct manufacturer relationships with Mitsubishi and Fujitsu among others. I'd be surprised if they don't have some domestic plants that are manufacturing them, but I don't know that confidently. In terms of how long it would take to do the work. I mean, you know, it should be, I guess it depends on when you're starting, you know, when you're just, you know, there's time to design the system and, you know, the first visit, if you're willing to sign a contract that same day, I think, you know, the heat pump could be installed within your home within a month or two, but it kind of depends on, again, on the exact system that you want. And, you know, there are, likely going to be some supply chain issues that we're projecting just as, you know, I think as we enter 2023 and there's more federal incentives, you know, there are already some supply chain issues across the board. And I think if there's a spike in heat pump purchasing because of these new incentives, you know, that could slow things down. We don't know exactly how that will play out. But yeah, I think the sooner you get in the queue, the sooner you'll get your heat pumps installed.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: All right, thank you. To the Energy and Environment Committee members that are still on the call, any more questions?
[Robert Paine]: Can you hear me? Sure, Paul, go ahead.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: What would be your pitch to a low-income person who lives in the house, and is struggling to, you know, meet the energy bills, what would be your pitch? And I know, you see that the issue with with taking on all of this stuff is, is that is that is that people are so concerned about, you know, paying bills the next day, that you kind of, like climate change is a secondary issue or might be even a tertiary issue. So how would you, and I know this is a tough question. I'm somewhat sorry asking it, but you know, You, you are here. And I hope, I hope you have some answer for this. But you know, you have to. I mean, you are trying to change, introduce change in our conception of energy usage. So how would you how would you pitch that to a to a low income person?
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: So, I can take it first step, Dennis, feel free to jump in. So first, again, I would just highlight, you know, depending again on their income levels, how much of this work could be free for them to have installed. And say, you know, things like insulation are guaranteed money savers for them. If they just want to insulate, you know, that's a great thing that, you know, is a slam dunk for them. But I think the other things I would talk about are things like health and comfort, right? That if you're talking about making the air in your home healthier for your family, that's a hard thing to put a price on. Any parent who's ever watched their child struggle to breathe can intimately understand how they want to make that air as clean and healthy as possible for their kid. And, you know, particularly if these are homes with, again, issues of deferred maintenance, where if they've got mold or asbestos or jeopardizing the health of their family, you know, there are steps to take to remediate. There are some incentives for remediation, not perfect incentives, not for all types of remediation. But yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And again, I think as you look to the comfort level, right, that heat waves are going to be an increasingly prominent part of our lived experience in the coming years and decades. And again, having cooling systems is both a thing to make your home life more comfortable if you don't currently have cooling, but also, again, I think increasingly, we're gonna start seeing air conditioning as a human right. You see heat in the winter as a human right, where it's just something you need to survive. because it's going to increasingly get hot where lives are jeopardized by not having cooling units. And, you know, being able to bring that into the home, I think, is another point that's, again, hard to kind of put a price on that level of comfort and health, as well as, again, the benefits of not condemning humanity to a worse fate, if you're able to do your part on that.
[MCM00001610_SPEAKER_11]: Sure, sure. I very much appreciate your answer. Thank you.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Hello. Thanks, guys. And anything else, Bob?
[Robert Paine]: I think we're getting close to the end of the hour and a half anyway. I'd like to certainly thank Craig and Dennis for their time and answering all the questions. And maybe we'll have afterward have more discussions with them. Follow up questions, we'll be in contact.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Yes, thank you, Craig and Dennis. I think this was a topic of huge interest to the community. And if people weren't already excited about heat pumps, hopefully they are now. I know I am. So we really appreciate you guys taking the time this evening
[Es1km9jUMPM_SPEAKER_00]: Well, Yvette and Bob and Jacqueline, thank you all so much for hosting us today. Very much enjoyed the conversation and the questions. And I think we'd be delighted to be able to work with you all in some capacity moving forward.
[t15sh-lyws8_SPEAKER_04]: Great. All right, everyone. Have a great night. Thank you so much. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have a great night. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.