Episode Summary

On Episode 3, we talk to Nick Stevens , Co-Founder and board President of Go Electric Colorado , one of the non-profits pioneering the concept of “electrification coaching” and “heat pump coaching.”

We will explore how volunteer-staffed coaching organizations are springing up across the country with the mission of educating neighbors and the general public about getting fossil fuels out of the home and moving to healthy and climate-friend appliances like heat pumps, trying to demystify a process that can seem intimidating and bewildering to many.

Meanwhile, Nick also comes to us with experience working at the national level with Rewiring America , which also just rolled out its own electric coaching program.

So today we'll cover how coaching works, how to scale up and make coaching programs most effective, how coaching programs measure success, how to get involved if you want to join or start a coaching program in your area, where Nick sees coaching creating an impact in the future, and a lot more.

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Key Links Discussed in the Podcast

• Go Electric Colorado
• Rewiring America – Personal Electrification Planner
• Rewiring America - Electric Coaching
• Clean Energy Communities Fund (to find a coaching program in your area, or start your own)

Transcript

The following is an automatically generated transcript, which means there are certainly errors. 

[00:00:00] Nate: Hello, and welcome to the heat pump review podcast. I'm your host, Nate Westheimer. Heat Pump Review is a newsletter, podcast, and data resource for all things heat pumps. Our goal is to discuss heat pumps in a way that is accessible to people who are curious about the technology and how we can best develop and deploy this technology as the world transitions from inefficiently burning fossil fuels to efficiently heating and cooling our homes and businesses, heating our water, cooling our foods, and even greening our industrial processes with an ever improving energy grid.

[00:00:39] If you like today's content, check out our website at heatpump. review. Subscribe to our newsletter and check out our past episodes by subscribing to the podcast and your favorite podcast player. Today, we're speaking to Nick Stevens, co founder and board president of Go Electric Colorado. A non profit that works to make sure every Coloradan has the support they need to go electric in their homes and in their commutes with the mission of creating an equitable and thriving world powered by clean electric devices.

[00:01:10] Our topic is electrification coaching in general and specifically heat pump coaching. We will explore how volunteer coaching programs are helping educate the public about heat pumps, trying to demystify the process of getting dirty fossil fuels out of our homes. In order to improve our health, economic, and environmental outcomes.

[00:01:31] I think you'll agree with me that Nick is the perfect person to interview on this topic. Because he understands this coaching movement from both the local and national level. As you'll hear on the podcast, Go Electric Colorado is one of a growing number of local organizations like the Heat Smart Alliance in Massachusetts, Electrify Oregon, Electrify Central Ohio, and over a dozen more.

[00:01:51] Meanwhile, Nick also comes to us with experience working at the national level with rewiring America, which also just rolled out its own electric coaching program. So today we'll cover how coaching works, how to scale up and make coaching programs most effective, how to get involved. If you want to join or start a coaching program in your area and where Nick sees coaching creating an impact in the future.

[00:02:14] So let's get into it. Nick, welcome to the heat pump review podcast.

[00:02:19] Nick: Yeah, thanks for having me, Nate.

About Go Electric Colorado

[00:02:21] Nate: Great. So Go Electric Colorado would love for you to quickly tell us about its history its mission, and anything else about it.

[00:02:31] Nick: sure. So yeah, Go Electric Colorado started about two years ago. We were founded in the backyard of one of my co founders where we saw the need for all of these appliances to get into homes and, you know, Experience personally the challenges that it takes to make electrification happen in the home. There's a lot of barriers that are put up there. It's not the default option option. You know, fossil fuel appliances tend to be the recommendations that you hear from contractors who come into your homes. And it's it can be difficult to make this transition. So we really wanted to provide people with support so that they could do this and, you know, choose to confidently go electric. And it wasn't just something that they were taking a risk on, but something that would actually improve their lives and help them to, you know, Improve the comfort and bill savings that they experience in their homes so we we've been doing that for a couple years now. The primary service we offer is One on one coaching we do that both virtually and in person people can go to our website and sign up right on the website for a A consult with one of our coaches.

[00:03:38] We're about 20 to 30 volunteers so far And growing pretty quickly and we're in three different regions in colorado

[00:03:46] Nate: Wonderful. And so you say it was sort of founded in the backyard of a friend or your, your, your backyard.

[00:03:53] Tell me about the, that inspiration. Okay. So, so you, you, and Stuart are hanging out. Was there a model that you had heard of? Is this inspired off of another organization's model or was this something that was more invented whole cloth by the two of you for your organization?

[00:04:11] Nick: Yeah, so it was myself and my two co founders Julia and Stuart, and then we had a couple other folks who have been kind of loosely involved there as well. And yeah, we, we hadn't seen anything like this since then we've seen HeatSmart Alliance and Electrify Oregon and, you know, some organ, some organizations like that doing this work and have been tremendously inspired by them, but at the time, you know, we, we did not see anyone else Helping people go electric, you know, helping to tackle the challenges. And, you know, there weren't a lot of people that we even knew who had gone electric outside of, you know, Stu was really the first one that I got to see who had an all electric home already. So yeah, we, we we saw this need in this problem and Stu and Julia had already been starting to kind of, you know, jump into some houses and hand out some flyers and go, you know, really grassroots on things.

[00:05:01] And we pull it together. We're like, okay, how do we make this something that can really happen across Colorado? And they're Boulder based. I'm down in Littleton, Colorado, just outside of Denver. And so it was a cool opportunity to think about, you know, the multiple markets that exist throughout Colorado and how they might each be engaged.

[00:05:19] And so we've managed to build this sort of coalition of folks in northern Colorado, Boulder County, the Denver metro area. And we've even done some consults kind of, you know, across the state, you know, virtually in a few areas. But it's been really cool to kind of see the, the type of people that get pulled into this.

[00:05:35] You know, we have a lot of folks who, you know, are retiring and starting to, you know, look at opportunities to to spend their time in a meaningful way now that they no longer, you know, need to get an income. And that's been a lot of our volunteers. We've also had some, Some young people who are eager to get into this work who just want to learn about it and they jump in and volunteer with us. And so it's been really cool to just kind of see the coalitions that are building around this work. But yeah, it really started from, you know, sitting in that backyard, seeing that there was a problem. And, you know, being able to, you know, Basically being like we have to create something here. These challenges are big. It's really important that we decarbonize, you know, everything that we electrify everything everywhere that we can and we weren't, you know, exactly sure how to tackle it. But I think we've got a good start on it. And we've been able to serve, you know, a couple of hundred homes or so up to this point. And we're starting to figure out how to make that scale.

[00:06:29]

Client Engagement Model

[00:06:29] Nate: Great. So tell me about the engagement model that a client, a community member, starts. how do they learn about, Your services, how do they sign up for your services? How long is the wait? What does that life cycle like for somebody who you end up working with?

[00:06:51] Nick: Yeah, great question. So. It starts in a few different places. It kind of depends on how they hear about us. We are doing, you know, several types of events. So we'll go out and table at events. We were just at an electric Avenue event with good business Colorado a couple weeks ago, which was an electric cooking demonstration. And we were there, you know, talking about all aspects of electrification from cooking to EVs to heat pumps. So a lot of people will hear about us that way. We have done a couple of presentations to HOA communities. We're also, I'm doing a presentation later today with Colorado Sierra Club. And so there's lots of different ways that they might hear about us.

[00:07:31] And we've also been given a 50, 000 in kind donation from Ruckus Collective, which is a branding agency to build a branding strategy and go to market strategy. So we're starting to look at digital options as well. Rolling out social media and you know, building out our website to support folks as well.

[00:07:48] But typically someone will hear about us in one of those methods. And our recommendation. We'll usually send them directly to the website to sign up for a consult. We also often recommend that they go to rewiringamerica. org or homes. rewiringamerica. org because they can kind of get started in the meantime there and create a whole Whole home electrification plan.

[00:08:09] See what incentives, what free money is out there and available to them to electrify. And it helps set the conversation a little bit for our coaches. And so our coaches will talk, you know, about the different types of equipment. A lot of times someone has something in mind already that they want to replace.

[00:08:26] So maybe their hot water heater is on on the verge of breaking down and at its end of life. Or it may be that they've been thinking about an EV, they've ridden in a couple of friends EVs and they really want to replace their next vehicle with a uh, EV. And so we'll talk to them about that We often Oh, and one other thing I forgot in terms of how people kind of come into our organizations. We also host electric home tours about once a month throughout the Boulder and Denver area and starting to look at doing that in Fort Collins in northern Colorado. So these electric home tours give people the ability to actually get hands on in an electric home. So they'll come with a little bit of like an understanding from some of those things. They sign up we have a calendar on our website that they can sign up directly with one of our coaches for a one hour time slot. And all we really ask is, you know, tell us what you want. Give us a couple sentences on what you're interested in. And then our coaches will come in and kind of walk them through whatever it is they're, they're curious about. Learning and it doesn't stop there. Typically, our coaches are answering emails, responding to text for a little while. We love to have folks send us quotes that they get from contractors because we don't do any of this work or ourselves. You know, we we want to get the good contractors out there into people's homes. And so we say, Hey, you know, So here's the lists that are exist from like Boulder County and city of Denver for contractors, and we hope to eventually be able to have like a specific contractor recommendation platform Rewiring America is actually doing some work on that right now and they may be able to set the bar on that. But We'll help them look at quotes from contractors and make sure that the equipment makes sense for their homes. Because this is Colorado, we're dealing a lot with, you know, cold climate heat pumps. And one thing we've learned is that not every cold climate heat pump is the same. It's, there's definitely an apples and oranges comparison that has to take place.

[00:10:24] So a lot of times we'll be like, You know, what's the performance at five degrees? You know, what's the COP at five degrees? You know, is this truly a cold climate heat pump that's going to, take over for the majority of your heating? Is it going to keep you warm during a cold snap or is this something that really is not designed for colorado it's designed for a more moderate cold climate we're seeing though that we do not need backup gas heat in a lot of places , we've got many many examples now of all electric heating and sometimes we don't even need that Backup resistance heating. I don't have backup resistance in my house.

[00:11:00] So so yeah, those are the types of discussions that we're having through our coaching and everything from solar to EVs to hot water heaters to, you know, even like e bikes and things like that.

Heat Pumps as Part of Overall Electrification

[00:11:13] Nate: . So it's electrification in general. Our focus here is heat pumps, I'm curious what percentage of those conversations, not just in terms of clients residents that you're engaging with, but once you have engaged with it, are some of those forms of electric electrification taking less time, more time in terms of coaching people through making people comfortable, helping them with the decision?

[00:11:39] How would you position the, the Decisions around heat pumps in terms of the overall picture. Is it taking up the majority of those conversations or, or is something else,

[00:11:54] Taking up most of the time and attention of your coaches and therefore your, your clients.

[00:12:01] Nick: Yeah, we definitely see heat pumps as the majority of our conversations and I think it's simply because they are the most complicated electrification project that there is. So people tend to need a lot of help with them. And you know, there's a lot of aspects that he pumps were. We start off by talking to them about weatherization.

[00:12:20] You know, when was the last time you had an energy audit? Have you done any air sealing in your attic or added installation to your home? Those types of things, because we know that heat pump installations work a lot better when we've taken care of that upfront building envelope. So yeah, a lot of our customers are coming to us wanting to talk about heat pumps and, and simply because that is one of the more complicated projects.

[00:12:45] We've had a lot of those recently too, around the Marshall Fire rebuilds that happened in Boulder County. So about, I think it was about two years ago now there's a pretty terrible wildfire in Boulder County that destroyed a lot of homes and there have been great incentives to build back electric with these homes. Unfortunately several of our clients ran into issues with their, their home builders. Because the systems that they designed, had flaws in them. Either they were oversized or the switch over temp for the backup heating was far too high, causing really high electrical bills. So, lot of these will actually be great for in person councils where we'll go in, we'll check out the system and we'll identify some of these things that were set by the contractor and try to take those back.

[00:13:36] And we're working with Boulder County to develop some recommendations for contractors and make sure that these things get installed properly and we are. You know, we aren't necessarily, you know, heat pump installers or anything like that. We do have several technical oriented people on the team who understand these things. Stuart, especially as my co founder, you know, he's an former aerospace engineer, so he gets all the math behind everything. I'm BPI certified as a building analyst. So I've started to dive into that stuff as well. And we have several people who, you know, just like to run the numbers on things, but then we also have, coaches who are More on the customer service oriented side. They are passionate about this stuff and they want to help people understand the transition. Those coaches are just as valuable because you know, this is a tough work, but to get back to your to your question. Yeah, heat pumps are the majority of our conversation.

[00:14:27] It's just it is a difficult topic topic. I wish I could say it was easy. There's a lot of work to do to get heat pumps to be the default choice for home heating and cooling, but the benefits we're seeing are just Incredible. I mean, there is no better comfort option for your home than a heat pump. And we're getting more and more people as they see that really wanting to choose that option.

[00:14:51] So yeah, it's been, it's, I like it because, you know, it's one of the biggest contributors to carbon pollution in a home. So if we can get somebody to switch over to a heat pump, a lot of the other stuff kind of falls falls in line behind it.

Interplay of Coaches & Energy Auditors

[00:15:06] Nate: In some states, maybe all states, there's some form of an energy auditor program. You mentioned you being BPI certified. And so this would be where somebody who's been certified in home performance in some way comes to your house. Does a blower door test takes a bunch of measurements and, and spits out a report in terms of the, the status of your home and where you might find the biggest energy savings.

[00:15:37] How are you finding a coaching program fitting in with if there are problems? energy auditor type of programs sponsored by the state or the utility in your areas. How are you seeing them fit in together? Are they adjunctive? Are people running into each other's work? Curious about that interplay.

[00:15:57] Nick: Yeah. Great question. I think this is the question that's sits on my mind a lot, simply because I think it can be so much better. I think in an ideal world, there isn't a difference, you know, they're one in the same. And we have several people in the organization besides myself for BPI certified who understand that aspect and can do that work. But, you know, Getting going into a home for, you know, 23 hours doing the blower door, you know, all that stuff. It needs to happen for every home, but it's also kind of a different scope of work than what we do. Ideally, we'd be able to do both together. But I think what we're really finding is that a lot of the energy auditors out there. We'll talk electrification with you, but it's not necessarily their, their specialty, you know, they can appreciate a heat pump because of its efficiency, but they're not necessarily going out there and like, really trying to understand the ins and outs of sizing a heat pump or, you know, which contractors are best at installing them or, you know, what are the pieces of equipment some are and that's great.

[00:16:58] But. You know, not all of them are. And so I think that for the time being, we're here as go electric to, to make sure that there is someone that they can go to, to talk about that. And we've talked about getting more people in the organization, BPI certified and buying some blower doors and all that. And that may be in the future for our organization. We run a pretty lean ship right now. You know, we're completely volunteer based. We have no paid staff. All of our donations have been from small contributors up to this point. And so, you know, we'd love to get to the point where we could just, you know, hire some staff and run blower door by blower doors and run energy audits and stuff like that, you know, and, you know, even get some of those incentives and things.

[00:17:37] But I think. Really, the problem we're trying to solve is that people have faced so many barriers to electrification that we need to just talk through those with them and there's a lot of value to that and the energy audit, you know, there are other people out there who can do that energy audit and who can, you know, get the blower door number and, you know, send that back to us and we can, you know, make sure that, you know, That's included in, you know, whatever manual J the contractor is doing and what they're doing, the size things, but there's really a lot less people out there who can talk, you know, heat pumps and evs in the big picture of whole home electrification.

[00:18:13] And so we really want to meet that need more so than even the energy auditor need.

[00:18:20] Nate: So an energy auditor might say, you might consider a heat pump, but then leave you there. You're going to be able to help make sure that that resident brings that project to completion in a way that is done correctly, and they feel confident around not just getting a slip that says you might consider this.

[00:18:40] Nick: Exactly.

[00:18:41] Yeah. And I mean, not only is it, you know, helping them, but it's like, Hey, come to our next electric home tour and see this stuff for yourself. That's something an energy auditor is never going to do. And no, you know, no discredit to the energy auditor. You know, I

[00:18:56] Nate: It's not a part of

[00:18:56] their

[00:18:56] Nick: much, but they don't. Yeah, it's not part of their scope. They're not there to, you know, sell you on electrification. You know, we want people to experience this stuff and see the benefits and see the air quality improvements and see, you know, the comfort that exists in a home we can. So we can help for that sort of whole scope of things that might come up.

[00:19:15] Whereas like an energy auditor, you know, they kind of have their limited scope and they need to knock that out in a specific period of time.

Training the Coaches

[00:19:22] Nate: And how do you think about training? You mentioned again yourself being BPI certified and that some of your other volunteers have chosen to do that as well. When somebody wants to become a volunteer, what is the training that you're asking them to have gone through? How are you preparing them to be the most impactful energy coach?

[00:19:43] Nick: Yeah. So there's a few different things. You know, very early on, it was just like, Who's passionate about this stuff? let's throw them into Google meet meeting with our clients and see what happens. We've come a long way since then. And a lot of that is due to Rewiring America.

[00:19:59] I'm hugely excited about this electric coaching program that they developed. I've been fortunate to be able to be a part of it. I'm actually presenting to I think it's our third or fourth cohort later today on with our personal electrification planner. Coaches are using that tool to kind of help guide some of their their consults. So we had Go Electric Colorado. You know, we were looking at starting our own kind of. Training program for electric coaches and fortunately Rewiring America started for us and they built this with Abode out of Massachusetts. So it's a really solid program that has both the soft skills that you need as a coach as well as the , somewhat technical training. And you can kind of find your own sort of balance between those, you know two things. You don't have to go super technical, but that stuff is there if you want to learn about it, which I think is great. So we've been asking all of our coaches to jump into that program. And go through it. It's a four week program, and it's a great baseline for understanding all of the different appliances that exist in electrification for understanding some of the components to heat pump sizing and understanding the challenges that people, you know, may face as they go out there searching for contractors and things of that nature. So it helps build sort of empathy for the clients that we're working with. So we're doing that. We also at Go Electric Colorado, we specifically will pair new coaches with existing coaches to shadow. So they'll do a few consults with an existing coach to kind of get up to speed, understand what it's like, understand what types of questions they may be asked.

[00:21:41] And and then Our organization uses slack as our online communication tool. So we we use that as a sort of help card. Whenever you run into a question in a consult that you don't know the answer to, chances are there's someone else in the organization that. Is really nerdy about that subject.

[00:22:00] And so we'll post questions in our slack and another coach will jump in and answer those and get the answer to the client. So that's kind of how we're trying to make sure that every coach has the support they need to do this work. Not every coach has gone through the electrification process. Some are partially through it in their own homes and some are just you know, just getting started, but they care about this work so much that they want to support it. it's great when people want to, replace all their fossil fuel appliances with electric all at once. But like, you know, the main thing we want to say is, when it dies, electrify or ideally get a head start on that slightly before the thing died because you don't want to be caught in the middle of winter with a broken furnace. So, we don't require everyone to have a fully electric home to do coaching. The important thing is that they see the value of this and we'll give them the experience and tools necessary to help people on the journey.

[00:22:55] Nate: How about a more niche maybe part of creating that consistent experience or that training. So you mentioned you don't have auxiliary heat as part of your heat pump setup. But at least here in Maryland, you get four estimates from a HVAC installer and you're going to get, Two with electric resistance heat and two that tell you to keep your natural gas line and even use auxiliary natural gas heat.

[00:23:25] None of them will or none that I've come across will tell you go completely full heat pump and this isn't even a cold climate region. When you're dealing with creating a consistent coaching experience, are you Saying that there's a requirement that they guide people towards a full heat pump, only no auxiliary heat.

[00:23:52] Are you giving some flexibility to your

[00:23:54] Nick: Oh, no. Yeah, there's a lot of flexibility in there. And I would say, you know, we're also not necessarily trying to be the end all expert in the process. Like, we lean on the contractor for a lot and we want the contractor to be involved with the client. And, you know, we want, but we want the client to be educated.

[00:24:16] So that they can talk to the contractor and ask the right types of questions. So we're generally not involved with the contractor directly, but we also, you know, want to make sure that the client has the questions that they need. So we're not going to necessarily come in and say like, no, you don't need backup heat or something like that.

[00:24:32] We're going to say, hey, here's the options. So there is, you know, supplemental heat, there's full on backup heat, and then there's like gas backup. And those are the, you know, the options you may see from a contractor. Ideally. Because we know your motivations, like we may know whether your climate motivated or whether you, your main thing is, you know, I just want really low utility bills like we can try to guide you Towards, you know, which one of those solutions might be the best, but ultimately we're going to say, you know, Hey, the contractors, the one that has done the sizing here, maybe we've double checked it, but like, we're going to try to, you know, Emphasize the contractor as being the the expert, but we want to make sure that you know which questions ask them so that we know that you got the right contractor that is an expert. And if if their questions or if their answers are coming back and you know, they can't speak to the difference between, you know, supplemental heat and full on backup heat. Then maybe it's not the right contractor for the job. Let's get you a couple more quotes and then we can have you ask these questions of those contractors. So so it's a, it is a little bit of a dance. Like, we don't want to get in the middle of the, the client and the contractor. We want them to have that relationship, but we want to make sure the client has the right questions to ask the contractor and that they, you know, when they don't understand something that they have a neutral party.

[00:25:55] Okay. With us that they can go to to ask a question about, but we are not, you know, putting ourselves out there is like the experts on heat pump sizing or anything like that. We're, we're enthusiasts. We're your next door neighbor who has done this before and wants to share our experience with you. So, you know, I, I like to think of this as kind of the social fabric of the electrification movement, you know, and when we look at adoption, like a lot of adoption is happening.

[00:26:20] Because, you know, you heard about your friend who did it or someone at work was talking about their experience or, you know, you got the ride in a friend's E. V. Like, we're kind of that person in the process with sometimes a little more technical, you know, knowledge. But we're going to still really, like, try to emphasize the contractors in the field who are, you know, professionals who, you know, are doing the sizing but we're there is kind of a check on all of that.

Evaluating & Recommending Contractors

[00:26:47] Nate: So, to create a consistent experience, you're You're pushing people towards the Rewiring America training program. You're pairing people up with existing coaches to watch how that works. You mentioned keeping a book of contractors, though, that you've had success with, that you trust. Is there anything that you're doing there to Test to make sure that the contractor is aligned with the mission of the organization and some of these goals or any litmus tests there in terms of You know how they're treating customers or even how they're thinking about climate because

[00:27:25] as you just

[00:27:25] Nick: Mm hmm.

[00:27:26] Nate: you all were motivated by climate to in creating the organization.

[00:27:30] That's core to your mission But it might not be core to the resident's mission. How do you think about it when it comes to the contractor's mission? Yeah.

[00:27:41] Nick: So a couple things we're not, we don't have like an official list of contractors. Oftentimes the, the local municipality or the county will have a list that's related to the rebates that are available. So we've got some really great incentives available at like the local and state level here in Colorado, and those rebates have contractor lists that go with them. So that's sort of hones in. The first layer of contractors where it's cutting out people who straight up just don't do heat pumps. Now, we still have contractors on that list who will try to talk you out of a heat pump. Unfortunately, we have had people come back and say, yeah, that that contractor like I called him up and you know, they just tried to sell me another furnace. And so we have notes on that. You know, we're aware of that, but we're still trying to kind of lean on those lists. And then, you know, individual coaches, if they have experience from their own home or something, might share that experience about a contractor. But we're not trying to put together our own list right now, just because there's, there's a lot to consider there and we as a small organization, you know, Really don't have the capacity to define what that bar is and set it and then feel that we can really like back it up. So we, we are looking to organizations like local governments, like Rewiring America to build that list. And I think we're going to have a really good list probably by the end of the year for most places in Colorado. And we're starting to see, you know see some of those come together. So like right now, Rewiring America on their website will show you What we call kind of a list of lists of contractors so you can go find a specific contractor for energy auditors That's put out by BPI You can find a specific one For ev chargers and things like that.

[00:29:36] So there are these lists out there that exist of people who have sort of met a bar But we can't always tell that that bar is the one that we really hold as an organization or as individual coaches and so To believe that it's going to do the right job, which is why we want to be there to look at the quotes.

[00:29:53] We want to be there to help you understand the questions to ask. So it's not sort of a perfect setup right now. To be honest, like, I'd like to be able to say, Hey, these are the contractors that we really know and love and trust and can get behind putting that list together From , an official, here's the list kind of like perspective is not something we can really do as an all volunteer organization that, doesn't have the funding to go out there and make sure everyone's tested and stuff like that.

[00:30:18] So, we will talk to you about previous things we've heard from clients about a contractor. And we've got a few contractors who have consistently just, you know, Gone great feedback. So like we might mention those, you know, in a consult, if the coach has a specific experience with them. But yeah, there's, there's not like a single threshold bar that we're able to say this contractor meets and we can, you know, wholeheartedly recommend them. And that's a lot of that comes back to, to like, we want to be a neutral third party. So, you know, we want to approach that relationship very carefully.

[00:30:54] We don't accept. Any money from contractors. There's no lead referral or anything like that. All of our money- what little we have of it as a small volunteer organization- has come from just donations from individuals over the course of time.

Use of Funds

[00:31:08] Nate: And what does that, since you're mostly a volunteer organization what do you use the money for? Is that for sort of just a collateral for the events that you talked about?

[00:31:18] Nick: A lot of it does go to collateral for events. we have quite, quite a lot of money going out there for, you know, handouts and things like that. We probably have too many handouts. I think it actually gets a little confusing sometimes because we're so passionate about all the different great things about electric that every time someone has an idea, we build a new handout for it.

[00:31:36] But we're looking to kind of hone those in this, this branding strategy and go to market plan is, is great for helping us identify what's really important to the people that we want to talk to and build those out. So that's one thing we, one of another big expense is actually our, our calendar software to help manage all of these coaches and all of the bookings that are happening.

[00:31:58] That's probably our biggest, biggest expenses in the organization. We use Calendly for that, and it works pretty well, but it's unfortunately not cheap. And then we also have other things for events, you know, cookies and things like that. We've done a little bit of training here and there on some things that we provide the folks. And that's really about it so far. To be honest, we're trying to keep, you know, as lean as possible because we'd love to get get to a point where we've got some grants coming in and we can use that money to actually like hire someone who can help sort of manage all of our different volunteers who can make sure we're bringing in partnerships with all of these different organizations and finding ways to integrate them that is mutually beneficial.

[00:32:49] So like we were kind of trying to hold a little bit in the coffers for for hiring that first employee, hopefully sometime in the next year or so.

Measuring Success & Achieving Equity

[00:32:57] Nate: Well, let me ask you a little bit about grants and I'll ask it in two ways. One is how you think about measuring success and impact. I saw a, a short presentation about the electric coaches program with Rewiring America that mentioned something about a two x improvement on the decision or completing a project through coaches' involvement there, wondering if you've dabbled in trying to measure the impact of Go Electric and secondly, as you are getting into the grant game.

[00:33:36] And I'm sure this is part of your mission regardless of federal funding, but there's the concept of Justice 40 and making sure that as you all are out there and and getting volunteers to help folks, it's not just the wealthy folks who are

[00:33:52] transitioning to healthier homes to having lower energy bills.

[00:33:57] And, and leaving people who have been historically left behind in energy transitions with the less healthy homes and with the higher bills. So how do you think about equity in the work that you're doing, which I'm sure ties back into some of the grant work that you're doing? And how do you think about measuring impact?

[00:34:17] Nick: Yeah. Two great questions. Let me jump into the equity piece first. And don't let me get off the hook for the second piece if I forget about it. So we are currently applying for a grant around cooling and air purification in Denver that is solely focused on those who don't have any access to cooling right now, you know, with climate with climate change, we're seeing that air conditioning is now a necessity for every, you know, every person in the Denver metro area.

[00:34:47] It didn't used to be the case. But, with both climate change and also with, you know, the pollution that we're seeing primarily from fossil fuel fuel use cases in the Denver area. We have absolutely terrible ozone here. Air purification is, you know, really, really important. So. There's a grant that we applied for recently with the city of Denver where we're going to sort of help help low income folks get access to that.

[00:35:10] And we're going to come in as sort of an electrification expert there to help them understand what is the long term sort of plan for your home because we're, we'll be working with if we get the grant, we'll be working with community based organizations who are delivering window unit ACs and indoor air purifiers that just plug into your wall. We want to help them understand, okay, how do we move from that to like a whole home system? What does electrification look like? Let's identify the incentives. And Denver actually has some really great lower income disadvantaged community related incentives. And then there's also going to be More rebates coming online with inflation reduction act that Colorado has applied for they should be hopefully seeing those come online in fall or winter so there's going to be a lot more money available for lower income Disadvantaged communities. So we want to make sure that that money gets used So we're going to be we provide our services to literally everyone. We don't have to We don't charge anything for our services, first off, which makes it accessible to everyone. And we have probably primarily served Mid middle income to wealthier individuals up to this point, just because electrification, you know, has the barrier of having higher up front cost and some some examples, but we're starting to see that cost come down for some things like EVs are starting to become more affordable. But you know, we ultimately want to electrify everything for everyone. So to us, success is not success unless it happens for all incomes. So are we are, you know, very interested in sort of beginning to build bridges with light at communities and understanding how we can help there. To be honest, you know, we're at the very beginning of that journey. We have volunteers who are lower income, you know, who have connections in those communities, but I think we're, we're not sure exactly what it looks like to electrify those communities. How to get the money, how to make sure that they're there. There's been some great examples from sister organizations like energy outreach, Colorado has done some of that work for individuals who have like asthma and health concerns. As far as we're concerned, we just want to be there to make sure that as this money becomes available, we can make sure it's going to the right people. We can get them connected to the right contractors and, enable them to do this stuff. But how exactly that's going to work, we're all going to be learning together, I think.

[00:37:43] Nate: And then measuring success.

[00:37:45] Nick: Yeah. Measuring success. So we have salesforce as sort of our, our CRM tool in the background. And so every single consult that we do is getting logged and, We're able to kind of track our success from that point.

[00:37:58] And that's one, you know, measure of success is just being able to say, Hey, we've been able to talk to this many people about electrification. The other half of that is how many of these people actually like followed through and. And did that and that is an organization is a little bit tougher just because we have to kind of extrapolate from the data that we have.

[00:38:16] Not. Everybody's going to get back to us and, you know, tell us that, you know, which projects they completed or fill out the survey or answer the phone call when we follow up. So we don't have exact numbers on that. And and to be fully honest, like we've been so focused on getting good advice out there and like good coaching out there that we're just now getting to the point where we're trying to follow up and see hey, what things did you complete? So we've started that effort to kind of call folks up or email them, but we don't actually have numbers yet to say that this is the number of people that electrified as a result of our our work. So Yeah. You know, we, to be fully honest, like we need more money. We need grants and we need donations in order to support that kind of thing because we're going to put as much into the coaching aspect of this as we can. And. Because, you know, we want to see see people get the advice that they need. You know, we have our yes about this a little bit earlier, but like, you know, how long does it take to get a consult? Like, we're, we're trying to open up the, the calendar schedule as much as we possibly can to get those out there.

[00:39:19] So that's really where we're focused. And right, you know, right now it takes like anywhere from a couple of weeks to there's times where we've been four to six weeks out for scheduling. We're adding more and more coaches. And we're starting to kind of like hit a bit of a exponential growth with that thanks to the electric coaching program. And we're also at the same time, though, expanding to new communities. So we're seeing our number of coaches increased, but also the number of people who want to get consults as well. So it's a tricky balance to find, and we also don't want to burn out our coaches, which we have, you know, definitely put a lot of pressure on some of our folks before, and I'm incredibly grateful to them because they are the heroes of this work. And, you know, I myself would love to get back in the coaching too, but, you know, there's so many different aspects to, to moving an organization like this. But it's been really cool. Just the community that's been built among our coaches. There's a lot of sort of shared effort going on and people seeing the work that everybody's putting in.

[00:40:18] And like every time, you know, we see a furnace get pulled out and see a heat pump go in, like there's a, you know, a celebration amongst the team, you know, Not necessarily literally, you know, in person, but like, I think everybody, you know, smiles when we see those types of things happen and you can see it in the engagement in our online Slack community.

[00:40:36] Like, you know, people are so eager to jump in and help out. But yeah, it's, it's a tricky thing to scale this kind of thing. And it's an even trickier thing to, you know, define and understand. Define success and then measure it. But we're getting better at that. And you know, we've been very fortunate to have, you know, tools like Salesforce where we can, you know, run some of that in the background and track everything.

How to Help & How to Start Your Own Chapter

[00:41:02] Nate: Well, this was going to be my last question, but it feels like the time to ask it. And I'll ask my second to last question last.

[00:41:08] How can, how can, people help? What, what is your call to action to folks in terms who are listening to this, whether they live in Colorado or don't live in Colorado?

[00:41:19] You know,

[00:41:20] how, how can people pitch in and and contribute?

[00:41:24] Nick: Yeah, my favorite question. So if you're in Colorado, go to Go Electric Colorado. org, check out the website. We are working on the website with the branding agency so hopefully it'll be a little bit better in the near future, but you can sign up there to volunteer, and you can sign up there to get a console. I recommend doing both just so you can, you know, see before you're in, before you have the inside perspective, get that the perspective from the outside so that you can use it to help us improve. So get a consult first and then sign up to volunteer. We have a list of volunteer roles on the website. If you're not in Colorado, go to Rewiring America, check out the electrification coach course, and you can get trained to be an electrification coach. I believe the next cohort is starting in August, so apply early because those slots do actually fill up. And you know, there may be a coach program in your community.

[00:42:22] So do some searching for that. You know, you mentioned HeatSmart Alliance. There's a couple others out there. There is actually an organization called Clean Energy Communities Fund that's starting to get launched, which is going to Award grants to local organizations of electric coaches and similar electrification enthusiasts who want to start up these types of programs.

[00:42:43] So they're going to be they're working on building that out, but there's going to be grants available through them to get this work going. So clean energy communities fund is one to check out. I think they're on LinkedIn or something like that right now, but they're still kind of building themselves up.

[00:42:58] Nate: That's a non governmental organization.

[00:43:01] Nick: Yeah, they're a nonprofit. They're, they're essentially going to try to, you know, fund a lot of these organizations there. A lot of the folks who are behind that were behind Electrify Oregon and the great work that those folks are doing in Oregon and Portland. So yeah, I would say that, you know, anyone can start this up. I think there is this misnomer that you need to have a lot of technical education to do this work. I think the biggest challenges to electrification are not necessarily the technical pieces, but really just helping people understand the process and step through the barriers that get put up. There are technical challenges to it, but honestly, we've solved a lot of those technical challenges. And really, it's a matter of, you know, helping people find the money for it, helping people understand what questions to ask contractors. And I think that that's something that anyone can learn. And, if you are interested in getting something like this start up, feel free to, reach out to us. You can go to Go Electric Colorado dot org and submit our contact us form. I'd be happy to chat with you about, what it takes to get one of these started up. There's been talks about getting some sort of national cohort together of these organizations and trying to share learnings, which I think would be incredible. So, yeah, I think it's a great time to really get involved in this work. It's really starting to scale. It's really starting to move forward and it's extremely exciting and very, very beneficial and important.

[00:44:23] Nate: Great. Well, my last question was going to be how you thought about whether local regions who do not have one of these organizations should have one with such a great organization like Rewiring America doing things on national scale. I was going to ask you if you saw a role for these local organizations.

[00:44:43] It sounds like you do. So I'll ask, if you want to comment on that, great, but my last question will be, as you do look around, and you mentioned the organization in Oregon, you mentioned HeatSmart Alliance. Are there any models that you've seen other communities use that you've borrowed and adapted into your own organization?

[00:45:04] What, what has inspired you in your peer organizations doing the same thing?

[00:45:10] Nick: Yeah. I mean, it's smart alliance is great. We've learned a ton from them. They've made their materials available to us. But like my background before I was ever, you know, in software engineering or building science or anything was in grassroots organizing for global poverty issues. This was, you know, well over a decade ago.

[00:45:29] So a lot of my inspiration comes from Organizations like the one campaign where I kind of cut my teeth on some of this stuff. So I think that today too, there's a lot of other organizations working for racial equality, working working on climate issues, but in a different space, whether it be like, you know, banking reform or something like that. And so we've learned a lot from those organizations as well. I think there's a lot of great models out there. And I don't think I can, like, point to one because of been doing this long enough that there's so many of them that they're they've all kind of mixed in into my head, but a lot of the things that Love the things that work well in grassroots organizing or digital campaigning or whatever it may be apply here.

[00:46:15] So if you have a skill set, whatever it may be, come bring it to work for electrification. I mean, I usually mentioned this at the beginning of talks, but like, I think to really put into perspective why electrification is important. When we look at global greenhouse gas emissions 91 percent of those net emissions are energy related. So when we talk about electrification, we're really talking about solving the large, large, large majority of climate change with, you know, electrification. Now, electrification can't solve all of those 91 percent of energy related emissions, but we're finding every single day that it can solve more and more of those use cases than we thought it could. And the number that I think is really fascinating is that 42 percent of those emissions come from decisions we make around our dinner table. So, you know, how we cook our food, how we heat and cool our homes, where we get our energy from, you know, what fuels the vehicles that we drive. These are 42 percent of emissions that we really have control over as individuals and different people have different amounts of agency. But when we look at the problem as a whole, we can make an incredible dent in greenhouse gas emissions simply by electrifying water heaters, vehicles, you know, heat furnaces to heat pumps. There's such an opportunity here that I think. You know, to bring it back to your original question, like if you have a skill set in something else, please bring it to work for electrification, because the benefits that we have from not only saving our earth from climate change, but the air quality around 12 million people globally die each year because of poor air quality, The health impacts alone are worth doing this, not to mention the climate impacts. And then at the end of the day, when it comes to your own home, he pumps are just more comfortable than, any, any furnace ever has been. And EVs are way more fun to drive. They're way more efficient. Way fast sometimes too fast if you're, you know, a cyclist like me, but then there's e bikes to throw into the mix as well, which can, help you with longer commutes and things like that.

[00:48:23] So I think we're really we're really at a tipping point here where we're seeing the tremendous benefit and value that comes from electrification and the harder we can push right now, the more people we're going to be able to save, the quicker we're going to be able to reap these benefits and just the better world we're going to have as a result.

[00:48:43] Nate: Well, Nick, I couldn't think of a better place to leave the conversation. That's, that's great. Such a great way to wrap it up. I'm kind of glad you wrapped it up that way rather than even starting it that way. Because that will, that will stay with me. And I think everyone else listening to this. So thanks so much for the work that you do with go electric with Rewiring America, and thanks for sitting for this podcast.

[00:49:04] Nick: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Nate. It was great.

Outtro

[00:49:06] Nate: This has been a production of Heat Pump Review. The show was edited by me, Nate Westheimer. Theme music is by AlisiaBeats . To support the podcast, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts , Spotify, or wherever you listen to the program. If you think someone would enjoy the podcast, please share a link to them as well.

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