Colorado Utility Works to Build Workforce and Green Its Community | Article

Utility providers are helping the nation transition away from fossil fuels by working with customers to install energy efficiency upgrades in homes and buildings. Upgrades like these often generate co-benefits to energy and cost savings, including improved health and safety, added home market value, reduced peak loads for the utility, and workforce opportunities.

In Fort Collins, Colorado, John Phelan and Kim DeVoe keep these co-benefits top-of-mind. They run the Epic Homes Program under Fort Collins Utilities, which is a municipal utility provider serving more than 75,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers. Epic Homes helps customers install efficiency upgrades, including insulation and air sealing, heating and cooling systems, and windows.

Solar and geothermal-powered homes in Colorado. Photo courtesy of The Coloradoan.

“Unfortunately, we have a long history, not just in Fort Collins, but in most areas of the country, of building housing with poor energy performance,” Phelan said. “Based on the history of codes and standards, what we know about building science, and different climates, there is a need for this everywhere.”

In 2018, after securing a $1 million prize from Bloomberg Philanthropies' U.S. Mayors Challenge, the program was reenvisioned to focus on expanding energy efficiency benefits to low- to moderate-income residents who live in rental housing and on the connection between efficiency and indoor air quality.

Epic Homes offers rebates and energy assessments of homes and partners with local contractors who are vital to the program’s work. Contractors help carry out each phase of the program to Fort Collins Utilities’ standards. The program is estimated to have supported over 100 jobs through 2020 and facilitated nearly $5 million in local economic investment.

“One of the first things we recognized was that our customers had no idea whom to call or what kind of work they would get from energy efficiency retrofits,” Phelan said. “We created a set of installation standards, training, and quality assurance, which Kim wrote and continues to maintain.”

Customers have the option of paying for Epic Homes upgrades through an on-bill financing program, which allows them to repay loans on their monthly utility bill with no upfront payments. By allowing for more affordable payments over time, programs like Epic Homes can expand access for households where funding is a primary barrier. Capital for these loans comes from a blended combination of utility funds, private banks, and grants. To date, the program has issued over $3.2 million through 286 loans to residents, who can borrow up to $50,000.

The Epic Certificate ties together all parts of the Epic Homes portfolio by providing before and after home energy scores and a list of the improvements made to the home. The certificate is intended to give improvements that may otherwise go unrecognized quantifiable value in the real estate market.

DeVoe noted that Epic Homes is also an opportunity to create and maintain jobs in a transitioning energy landscape. One major concern with net-zero 2050 goals is that many people in fossil fuel industries will lose their jobs. Fort Collins aims to be carbon neutral by 2050, and 54 percent of its electricity was powered by fossil fuels in 2020.

“Oil and gas are a very big presence in nearby Weld County,” Devoe said. “We have seen some folks that have come into our industry. It’s hard to keep those folks and to recruit them for the work that we do. As oil and gas wind down in the coming decades, HVAC is probably the biggest space where that could occur. We need to fix our existing buildings, too, so we need recruitment in that area as well, both residential and commercial.”

In 2020, despite the COVID pandemic, Epic Homes helped over 500 homes achieve upgrades, 50 of which were rental properties. Its next steps are to continue expanding the program’s reach into more rental properties, which proportionately house more low- and moderate-income residents.

“We know how houses work and we know how to fix them,” Phelan said. “It’s getting to that endpoint. We get better energy performance, better indoor environmental quality, and comfort, safety, and health for the people living there.”

Author: Rachel Snead