So you want help with your “climate smart” journey….

Happy Earth Day! It’s the perfect day to start working on your climate-smart plan and figure out what steps you might take over the rest of the year to reduce your household’s carbon footprint.

But let’s have a moment of honesty: this stuff can be hard and take a lot longer than you’d spend on a morning of tree planting or invasive plant removal. The main reason I started this website was to help make the process of switching to clean energy a bit easier and more understandable for normal people with plenty else on their plates. Still, a generic website can only do so much when it comes to figuring out your own options for reducing your climate footprint, and whether they’re actually affordable and impactful.

That’s especially true when it comes to home electrification, where you may be juggling considerations regarding your insulation, electric panel upgrades, utility rates, financing options, rebate programs, resale value, and of course your own comfort. With projects that may cost thousands of dollars, figuring out the right balance of all these factors is a high-stakes effort. So it’s no surprise that an emerging trend is for people interested in promoting clean energy homes to try to provide a helping hand to guide you along the way.

The good news is that there are getting to be more options in the category of home electrification “concierges” or “consultants” or “coaches,” or whatever term you might want to use for someone who can provide guidance as you try to navigate the world of HVAC contractors, solar installers, plumbers, electricians, and more. These range from for-profit businesses trying to monetize this type of customer service; to non-profits and utility programs supporting by philanthropic, ratepayer, or government funding; to grassroots volunteer efforts. (Full disclosure: I’m part of a group in the latter category here in Ohio.)

Although I’m not endorsing any particular one of these organizations, I thought it might be helpful to at least have a central clearinghouse to know what might exist in your neighborhood. So I’m introducing a new section on my Resources page: a list of whoever might be able to help you figure out some of the steps on your journey toward a climate-smart home, especially Step Two. I’m glad to get suggestions for additions since at this point it’s a somewhat sparse patchwork of options, and hopefully before we know it you’ll be able to find a home electrification helper wherever you may be.

A Climate New Year’s Resolution: Make a Friend

If you’ve been on this site before, you’re probably aware that I think a key part of being climate smart is to make a plan ahead of time for how you’re going to reduce your carbon footprint. Although it’s gotten relatively doable to find clean energy sources and technologies in the consumer marketplace, it is important to  leave yourself some time to do the right homework – check out product reviews, get contractor quotes, look at potential incentive programs or tax credits – especially for those items you might otherwise end up replacing in a last-minute emergency, like a car or HVAC equipment. That’s more important than ever now that the federal Inflation Reduction Act will offer significant tax credits and upfront rebates for clean energy investments over the next decade, which means you could miss out on thousands of dollars to supplement your climate budget if you don’t plan ahead.

That said, making that “climate smart” plan can be harder than any of us would like. I think that’s at least partly because of two things we’re all short on these days: time and trust. Everyone has to balance their grand climate ambitions with other priorities like getting dinner on the table or doing taxes or even fun things like watching the latest and greatest streaming hit. And when you do put in the time to find a product recommendation or get a contractor’s proposal for an HVAC overhaul, how can you trust that’s the right investment if you don’t have the bandwidth to become an energy expert yourself?i

My proposed answer? Make a climate friend. Okay, that may seem a little cheesy, and yes, I am the parent of a kindergartener. But consider this: where do you go when you’re looking for a new plumber or dentist, the best pizza place in the area, or the latest info on town zoning changes? Maybe it’s the local social media forum, or a text chat with friends and neighbors, or your book club/model train club/whatever club buddies. All of those are resources for you to tap into when you need to get information quickly and want it from someone you can trust. The good news is that, if you try, you can find the same type of resource for your burning questions about heat pumps, smart thermostats, and EV charging.

What does that look like? There are a lot of variations on the theme. You might have a local sustainability group  in your town or city, or a “green team” at your workplace or house of worship.If you’re not sure, you might ask a friend if they know of any resources (see what I did there?), or at the national level there’s a Facebook group called “Electrify Everything” that brings together electrification devotees from across the U.S. In fact, one of the reasons this blog has been pretty quiet is that I’ve been working with a friend to start a clean energy/electrification group in our area. (Central Ohio folks - join us!)

Of course I couldn’t make it through this blog post without saying it: you can get by (better) with a little help from some climate friends. They can save you time on figuring out your climate smart plan, point you to resources to carry it out, provide advice at each step, and keep you accountable to make real progress on reducing your climate footprint. Plus you might even have some fun with them along the way. Not a bad goal for 2023 — and probably easier than making it to the gym more or eating healthier, right?    

So you want to know how the Inflation Reduction Act can help you reduce your climate footprint….

Update: On December 22, 2022, the IRS put out a Frequently Asked Questions resource on the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy efficient home improvement and residential clean energy property tax credits that provides clarification on issues like whether you can “stack” credits for multiple items in one year, whether renters can use tax credits for improvements, and which types of energy audits and efficient appliances will qualify. Check those out, along with the non-profit Rewiring America’s Inflation Reduction Act guide, for all the latest and greatest!

The Inflation Reduction Act – a.k.a. the historic federal climate bill signed into law earlier this month – has a lot of incentives for people looking to make the switch to clean energy. There are incentives for home efficiency, heat pumps, electric vehicles, home solar and battery storage, and more. But my favorite part of the bill (if I had to pick just one) is that, at its core, it incentivizes planning ahead. If you’ve looked through this website before you may have noticed that I’m a big believer in making a plan for how you’re going to take the steps needed to lower your personal greenhouse gas emissions. In the wise words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” With the Inflation Reduction Act in place, the opposite is true too: if you have a solid plan for how to shrink your climate footprint, the IRA can do a lot to help you carry it out.

How? By establishing a series of tax credits and rebates that you can layer year-over-year to help make Steps Zero, One, and Two more affordable. Even assuming you consider energy efficient homes and electric vehicles likely to be cost-effective over the long term, their upfront costs may not always fit in your “climate budget,” and financing options aren’t always ideal. In that context, the opportunity to save thousands of dollars over several years of clean energy investments can make a “climate smart” home a lot more accessible.

Reflecting the need for more energy equity in the United States, a big focus of the IRA is supporting clean energy investments for low- and moderate-income households and communities. That does mean people at higher income levels may not qualify for all of the available incentives. For a quick check on what you might be eligible for, I recommend you use this handy-dandy calculator prepared by a non-profit called Rewiring America. With that said, here’s the full array of possibilities (noting that although I’m a lawyer, none of this is legal advice):

Tax Credits

• Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit (formerly the “Nonbusiness Energy Property Credit”): A nonrefundable tax credit for 30% of the costs of certain home efficiency investments, effective January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2032 (with new eligibility and caps applicable starting in 2023).

  • Eligible costs (subject to qualifying criteria):

    • Home energy audits

    • Insulation and air sealing materials or systems

    • Exterior windows/skylights

    • Exterior doors

    • Efficient heating and cooling appliances (electric or natural gas heat pump water heater; electric or natural gas heat pump; central air conditioning system; natural gas, propane, or oil water heater; natural gas, propane, or oil furnace or hot water boiler; biomass stove or boiler for home heating/hot water; oil furnace or hot water boiler)

    • Electric panel upgrades to equipment with a load capacity of at least 200 amps (in conjunction with other efficiency improvements)

  • Maximum credit amounts:

    • $1200 per year in total (except for efficient heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and biomass stoves and boilers)

    • $150 per year for a qualifying home energy audit for your principal residence

    • $600 per year for any individual item besides heating and cooling equipment

    • $600 per year in aggregate for exterior windows and skylights

    • $250 per year for any exterior door

    • $500 per year in aggregate for all exterior doors

    • $2000 per year for heating and cooling equipment

• Residential Clean Energy Credit: A nonrefundable tax credit for 30% of the costs of home installations of clean energy, phasing down to 26% for 2033 and 22% for 2034 (extended from prior version which was due to phase out next year).

  • Applies to solar, solar water heating, fuel cell, distributed wind energy property expenditures, geothermal heat pump, biomass, and battery storage with a capacity of at least 3 kwh

  • Effective January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2034, except 30% credit for battery storage is available as of January 1, 2023 for storage not charged from solar panels

• Clean Vehicle Credit: Nonrefundable tax credit of up to $7500 for new electric vehicle purchases, replacing the previously available $7500 tax credit, effective January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2032. (More information on the transition is available from the Internal Revenue Service here.)

  • Tax credit of $3750 available for vehicles which meet the requirement to have a certain percentage of “critical minerals” extracted or processed in the US or any free trade agreement country, or recycled in North America (40% in 2023, 50% in 2024, 60% in 2025, 70% in 2026, 80% after 2026)  

  • Tax credit of $3750 available for vehicles that meet the requirements for the value of battery components manufactured or assembled in North America (50% for 2023, 60% for 2024 or 2025, 70% for 2026, 80% for 2027, 90% for 2028, 100% after 2028)

  • Final assembly of vehicle must occur in North America

  • Eliminates per-manufacturer cap on number of eligible vehicles (i.e., vehicles from manufacturers like Tesla and Chevrolet are back on the table)

  • No tax credit for taxpayers with gross income above $300,000 for joint return/surviving spouse, $225,000 for head of household, or $150,000 for individual taxpayer

  • No tax credit for vehicles with an MSRP above $80,000 for van, SUV, or pickup truck, or $55,000 for any other vehicle type

  • Buyer can transfer credit to dealer for upfront payout toward price of car

• Previously-Owned Clean Vehicle Credit: New, nonrefundable tax credit for the lesser of $4000 or 30% of the sale price of the vehicle for purchases of previously-owned electric vehicles from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2032.

  • Vehicle must be at least 2 years old, and sold for less than $25,000

  • No tax credit for taxpayers with gross income above $150,000 for joint return/surviving spouse, $112,500 for head of household, or $75,000 for individual taxpayer

  • Can’t claim deduction more than once every three years

  • Credit can be transferred to seller for upfront payout toward price of car

• Alternative Fuel Refueling Property Credit: Renews tax credit for 30% of the cost for the purchase and installation of an EV charger, up to $1000 maximum, retroactively effective as of December 31, 2021 and extended through December 31, 2032.

  • As of January 1, 2023, this credit will be available only in eligible low-income or rural census tracts

Rebates

As long as your state claims the funding, the Inflation Reduction Act provides a total of $8.8 billion in grants to be used toward home efficiency and electrification rebate programs.

• HOMES Rebate Program: Provides $4.3 billion for state programs providing performance-based rebates for whole-home energy saving retrofits through December 31, 2031.

  • For single-family homes, a rebate of the lesser of $2000 or 50% of the project cost for a retrofit project providing energy savings of at least 20%, and a rebate of the lesser of $4000 or 50% of project cost for a retrofit providing energy savings of at least 35%

  • Low- and moderate-income households (earning less than 80% of the area median income) receive rebates of the lesser of $4000 or 80% of the project cost for a retrofit project providing energy savings of at least 20%, and a rebate of the lesser of $8000 or 80% of project cost for a retrofit providing energy savings of at least 35%

  • Equivalent rebates per dwelling unit for multifamily buildings

  • Can’t be combined with other federal rebates/grants

• High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program: Provides $4.5 billion for state home electrification rebate programs for low/moderate income households (earning less than 150% of the area median income), available through September 30, 2031.

  • Maximum rebates of $1750 for a heat pump water heater, $8000 for a heat pump (for space heating/cooling), and $840 for an electric stove, cooktop, range, oven, or electric heat pump clothes dryer

  • Maximum rebate of $4000 for electric panel upgrades, $1600 for insulation, air sealing, and ventilation, and $2500 for electric wiring

  • Project must be part of new construction or to replace a nonelectric appliance or first-time purchase of that appliance for the home

  • No more than total of $14000 in rebates

  • Rebate must be under 50% of cost of project for household with income between 80%-150% of the area median income

  • Rebate can be 100% of cost of project for household earning less than 80% of the area median income

  • Equivalent rebates for income-eligible multifamily buildings

  • Can’t combine with other federal rebates/grants

I know that’s a lot – but hopefully in a good way! So how do you make sense of it all and get the most help you can from the IRA? I’ll say it again: planning. Since the most universally available incentives are in the form of tax credits that are capped on a yearly basis, you may want to stagger your clean energy investments across multiple years – especially given that the credits are non-refundable, i.e., you can zero out your tax bill for a year but can’t get any refund past that point. Everyone will have a different approach depending on your circumstances, but here’s a high-level sketch of what it might look like as you go through the steps toward a climate smart home:

Find Your Contractors

At this point, we may share the suspicion that home contractors (energy auditors, electricians, HVAC professionals, plumbers, solar installers, etc.) are going to be in high demand going forward as people realize the next 10 years are a great window to leverage the IRA to help meet their clean energy goals. If you did any home improvement during COVID, you know what that means: long waits. So sooner is better than later to figure out which contractors might be a good fit and try to get on their calendars well in advance – before you’re stuck with a dying furnace and no luck finding someone good to install a heat pump.

Get a Home Energy Audit

2023: the Year of the Home Energy Audit. It has a certain ring to it, maybe? In all seriousness, if you cross this off the list up front, you can do some vital prep work to identify what you’ll need to do going forward to cost-effectively reduce energy waste in your home and lower the overall costs of clean energy supply. You might be able to start implementing those efficiency measures right away (as makes sense to maximize tax benefits), or if you’d be able to get enough of an efficiency improvement to qualify for an upfront payment through the HOMES program you may want to wait until your state gets that set up. Most importantly, you can get an expert analysis done to figure out what HVAC equipment will meet the sizing and performance needs for your home (and will actually be available in the supply chain going forward) – since, as experts have noted, the equipment that qualifies for IRA incentives might not always be the best fit for you. There’s a reason I already had this as Step Zero, and now that makes more sense than ever.

Do Some Electric Vehicle Research

The landscape for EV rebates has now gotten a lot more complicated given the various restrictions on the EV tax credits under the IRA, but one thing that seems unlikely to change is that demand for EVs is outpacing supply. Is your car getting to the end of its lifespan, or is your lease up in a year or two? You may need to get on a waitlist for a new EV now if you want to be able to get one when you’re ready. Or you may decide the right EV for you isn’t one that qualifies for a tax credit, and free yourself up to stop worrying about that angle. Either way, knowing what you’re getting into ahead of time can be a big help as you try to address an area that may represent a large part of your climate footprint.

If you think you’ll be heading down the road toward an EV soon (pun intended, of course), then you should also consider whether you need to install EV charging equipment at home in 2022 before the applicable tax credit narrows to apply only for eligible census tracts. Maybe not realistic for everyone, but worth taking a look to see if you can get that 30% “discount” while it’s broadly available.

Look at Home Solar (or Other Self-Generation Options)

As I explain in Step One, installing home solar or other renewable generation is not a great option for everyone. And hopefully other choices like community solar will only get cheaper as the IRA’s overall support for carbon-free power takes effect. However, if you’ve been on the fence about installing renewables at your own home, the IRA can make that more affordable. It’s worth taking a look, and figuring out how the IRA’s clean energy credits might intersect with your tax bill.

Electrify Your Home

The IRA does a ton for clean energy, but perhaps the most important thing it does is to help people move toward using efficient electric appliances that can run off that clean energy. As you’re tackling Step Two, it’s worth assessing how the IRA can help reduce your upfront costs for home electrification. Of course, don’t forget Step Three along the way – depending on where you live, using “smart” electric appliances in conjunction with special rates and programs to tap into the grid at the times when prices are lower may be just as important as rebates and tax credits in making sure that clean energy will fit in your budget.  

Kudos to you if you’ve stuck with me this far! Even if this is all still something of a blur, I hope you’ll remember the one message I started out with: start planning out your climate smart roadmap now, and the Inflation Reduction Act could end up helping you with a lot of the steps along the way.

So you want to know how much it costs to run a heat pump….

Here’s a burning question on the minds of . . . me, a few friends of mine, and possibly you if you’ve stumbled across this blog post: if you spend the money to install a heat pump, will that save you money on your monthly energy bills, and if so then how much?

Creative Commons license via Wikimedia

I’m assuming if you’ve gotten this far you know that switching your home from fossil heat to an electric heat pump powered by carbon-free energy is a key step in “electrifying everything” and reducing your climate footprint. If not, go ahead and check out Step Two on this site — along with Step Three, more on that below. But even if doing your part to address climate change is on your priority list, it’s not crazy to want to understand how a heat pump will fit into your climate budget over the lifetime of the investment — about 15 years on average, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

As you’re looking to switch to a heat pump for home heating, you may well run into budget concerns regarding: (1) up-front installation costs — the sustainable consumer website Carbon Switch has done a recent survey on what those might look like; and (2) unfortunately, some HVAC contractors who will tell you it’s much cheaper to use natural gas and that you’ll break the bank with electric heating. There are new options coming to deal with issue #1, as companies like Sealed develop approaches that let you install a heat pump without an initial lump-sum payment and instead cover the cost out of your home energy savings over time, and affordable utility or government financing programs pop up. Regardless, many people want to figure out the real deal on issue #2: whether a big investment in a heat pump will reduce your heating and cooling costs in the long run.

It turns out that’s harder than it might seem. I thought I’d dash off this blog post in a day or so and pat myself on the back, but it took a while longer than that! The good news is that there are tools you can use to get a handle on potential operating costs for a heat pump once you know how to use them — which I’m about to help you out with. And even more importantly, there are ways you can reduce those costs to maximize your bill savings and free up more of your budget for other steps to reduce your climate footprint. (Or at least a nice dinner out on the town, you deserve that for installing a heat pump!)

Starting with the basics, there are five main factors that will affect your potential savings from using a heat pump:

• Existing HVAC equipment size and efficiency

• Heat pump size

• Heat pump efficiency

• Climate (i.e., how many hours of the year you’ll likely be running the heat pump for heating/cooling)

• Fuel/electricity costs

That’s not too complicated, right? Surely someone has put together a calculator where you can enter all the right variables and have it spit out an estimate of potential bill savings?

Well, despite my best efforts I could not find one consolidated tool where you could run all the numbers in one fell swoop. If you come across one, let me know and I’ll send you some free Climate Smart Handbook swag. (I don’t actually have any swag, but I’ll make some just for you!) If you’re the kind of person with the technical skills to make a calculator and put it out there for the world to use, I’ll have to think of something even better — I’m done having kids, otherwise I’d name the next one after you. Maybe a pet?

For now, there are online cost calculators available from the HVAC industry that you can put together to get the whole picture. I’ve picked ones that I found relatively user-friendly, but I’m open to suggestions on alternatives. Drumroll please…..

• Existing cooling costs: https://www.seerenergysavings.com

• Existing heating costs: https://www.seerenergysavings.com/afue-savings-calculator (just enter the information for your “current system”)

• Heat pump heating and cooling costs: https://www.pickhvac.com/heat-pump/basics/cost-to-run

How do you actually use these? In each one, you’ll be able to enter information about the size and efficiency of your existing HVAC equipment or the heat pump model you plan to install as appropriate; where you live; and the price you pay for energy. (Check the fine print at the bottom of the SEER calculator for those last two items.) Note that calculating the applicable energy price may require some unit conversions, which is not too hard thanks to the Internet — here’s one calculator from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to make it easy. Once you’ve pulled all the data together, you should have a somewhat tailored estimate of how much you’re spending on heating and cooling each year currently based on your local climate and energy costs, and how much you’d spend if you switch to a heat pump.

The appliance and geographic information should be pretty straightforward, you’ll just need to ask your HVAC contractor (or look at the actual equipment) the tonnage and SEER rating for your current air conditioner; the BTU input and AFUE efficiency rating for a furnace; and the tonnage, SEER rating, and HSPF efficiency rating for whatever heat pump you plan to install. Of course make sure you have a good contractor first, who won’t stick you with an oversized heat pump without analyzing your home’s energy usage and seeing if it makes sense to also invest in some air sealing or insulation — more on that in Steps Zero and Two if you need a refresher.

For the cost of energy, I recommend the easy approach of focusing on an apples-to-apples comparison of fuel costs for each HVAC technology without worrying about the intricacies of your entire bill. To do that, you’ll look solely at whatever fuel supply or generation rate you pay for each type of fuel on a per-unit basis. (If you have trouble identifying that on your bill, then I’d call the utility to ask.) In case it’s not obvious, if your natural gas or electricity price varies seasonally (i.e., higher in winter or summer), then make sure to use the winter price for heating costs and summer price for cooling costs. Of course, if you do want to go the more complicated route of including every “volumetric” charge on your bill that varies based on your usage, then have at it!

Hopefully at the end of this process you’ll get some rough approximation of whether switching to a heat pump will save you hundreds of dollars a year for the next 15 years (entirely possible if you currently use heating oil or propane); won’t move the needle much on your annual energy costs; or will raise your bills as you shift from a fuel like natural gas to electricity. Will those projections be precisely accurate? Of course not, for a number of reasons. Energy prices change — we’re all living that reality now. Your house may have specific characteristics that make it easier or harder to heat and cool than these calculators assume. The weather might be particularly mild or severe in a given year. You might switch to a heat pump as part of “electrifying everything” and save a ton of money on fixed monthly charges from your natural gas utility. You may have solar panels that help you save money running a heat pump on hot summer afternoons. These factors all make it difficult to say for sure how your utility bills will turn out if you install a heat pump.

So why have I led you down this garden path? Don’t be mad, I have two actual reasons:

1. I’m hopeful that, at least for some of you, having reality-based numbers in hand to get a directional sense of the bill impacts of a heat pump is helpful in dispelling the fear from hearing scary stories about paying sky-high heating bills in the winter. Those types of anecdotes often date back to well before the current generation of heat pumps that can work well even in cold climates, without switching to more expensive “emergency” or “back-up” heating modes. The reality is that modern heat pumps are ready to use (hopefully carbon-free) electricity to heat and cool your home far more efficiently that traditional A/C units and furnaces.

2. Having an estimate of how much an electricity you’ll use with a heat pump can also give you a good idea of how much extra you can save — beyond simply switching to more efficient HVAC technology — by taking advantage of programs that offer discounted rates or bill rebates for using electricity at “off-peak” times when demand is lower. If you’ve read Step Three, you know that these types of time-varying rates and peak rebate offerings are rapidly spreading across the country, and with a smart thermostat you can easily sync a heat pump to leverage them for cost savings. It’s definitely worth checking out options in your area; getting even a few cents off your rate per kilowatt-hour can end up lowering your bills by hundreds of dollars a year. And if there’s nothing available right now, check out my page on getting involved in the policy world and you might be able to change that.

Bottom line: should you jump on the heat pump wagon because you know you’ll be guaranteed utility bill savings? Not necessarily. If you’re looking at a heat pump and concerned about the installation costs, should you check on whether you might also get a fair bit of savings for the next 15 years? Absolutely. In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” When it comes to a heat pump, it’s definitely possible to get an idea of where you’re going — and avoid being scared off the road toward reducing your climate footprint.

So you’re a Consolidated Edison customer looking to switch to clean energy….

If all goes well, the process of switching to clean energy as a Consolidated Edison (a.k.a. Con Edison or ConEd) customer may feel less like steps and more like an escalator. (Sorry, couldn’t help my spot-on instinct for bad puns.) That’s because there are programs in place at the utility, local, and state level in New York that can give you a substantial helping hand in reducing your climate footprint. Okay, “escalator” may be a bit of an exaggeration — I don’t want to suggest that you won’t have to do any legwork or won’t run into any obstacles — but compared to, say, the Florida Power and Light customers I discussed in my last post, you should have access to a lot of resources from Step Zero all the way through Step Three. (Although I’m focusing on ConEd here, the same goes for customers of pretty much any other New York utility, including Central Hudson Gas and Electric, New York State Electric & Gas, National Grid, Orange and Rockland, or Rochester Gas and Electric.)

The main downside of the clean energy landscape in New York is that it can get a bit confusing, just because there are so many moving parts. Fortunately, that seems to have registered with key decisionmakers, so you don’t need to bushwhack your way through a total wilderness. You can get free access to “Community Energy Advisors” across the state through a Community Energy Engagement Program administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), and learn about what clean energy programs you’re eligible for. NYSERDA also recently launched an online Energy Advisor tool — for homeowners, but also renters and landlords — that identifies available options based on the answers to a few simple questions. For those of you in New York City, the ElectrifyNYC program will provide consultation on clean energy for one to four unit residential buildings, and if you live elsewhere then it’s always worth seeing what your own local government may offer. Last but certainly not least, if you’re a Con Edison customer and not just reading this blog post for sheer entertainment value, you can also check out their website or contact their customer service center.

The bottom line: no matter what, you’re likely to be able to find programs and expert advisors to help you make the most of your climate budget — so the most important decision you can make is to go out there and get started! But if you want to get a sense of what exactly you’ll be doing, read on:

Step Zero: Get Your Home Ready

Here’s where I have the delightful experience of being able to tell you that, when it comes to ConEd’s territory, help in auditing your home and finding ways to save energy at the outset is not limited to single-family homeowners. In fact, New York offers several free energy audit programs statewide, and those are open to small multifamily buildings (four units or less) and renters (with the landlord’s authorization).

That’ll still miss a lot of you in the land of towering apartment and condo buildings, I know. If you fall in that category, ask your landlord whether they’re taking advantage of ConEd’s programs for larger multifamily buildings. If you really want to get into the weeds, you can even talk to them about the “Low Carbon Multifamily Retrofit Playbooks” that offer detailed roadmaps for decarbonizing multifamily buildings of all sizes. You may not be able to strong-arm them into anything, but some tactful questions can at least make sure they’re looking at what’s possible — especially in communities with stressed electric grids that ConEd is specifically targeting with energy-saving (or energy-producing) efforts through its Neighborhood Program. Also, remember what I said about looking to your local government? Those of you in the five boroughs may be glad to hear that New York City’s Local Law 97 will require buildings over 25,000 square feet to start lowering their energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2024, with a goal of reducing the emissions from those buildings 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. Nothing like a stick to go with that carrot!

To see if you are directly eligible for a home energy audit program, you can try calling one of the Community Energy Advisors or filling out the online Energy Advisor questionnaire I mentioned. NYSERDA also offers an online tool where you can specifically identify audit programs available in your county, including programs that offer income-qualified assistance for home improvements identified in the assessment. (More information on financing programs through NYSERDA here.)

One note for those of you who do qualify for one of these assessments: it won’t necessarily include the “gold standard” of energy audits, a blower door test. (Go back to the main Step Zero page if you don’t remember what that is.) You may be able to add that on for a few hundred dollars, and it can pay off if the more detailed analysis reveals problems with your home’s HVAC system or insulating “envelope,” or if it helps with identifying the smallest and least expensive electric heat pump for installation in Step Two. I can’t tell you that for sure, though, so this is one area where I’ll fall back on my go-to advice: talk to an expert. In other words, when you’re setting up your free assessment, ask if the contractor plans to do a blower door test, and if not whether it’s recommended (mentioning specifically if you’re planning to switch from natural gas heat to an electric heat pump).

Once you’ve got your to-do list of home improvements and appliance upgrades, ConEd offers a range of incentive programs that can help you afford at least your top priorities. NYSERDA has also started a “Comfort Home” program that provides significant discounts on a home sealing and insulation package. Remember to leverage the energy assessment process to get some tailored advice from your contractor on all of the programs you can tap into — there are likely to be some out there!

Step One: Carbon-Free Electricity

When it comes to switching to carbon-free energy, New York is once again a bit more complicated than your average bear, since it’s among the states that let you “shop” for electricity from companies other than the utility in charge of delivering that electricity over the grid to your home. That’s not inherently a good thing or a bad thing, but it does mean you have a broader set of choices to look at than in places where the utility is the only game in town.

NYSERDA Renewable Progress Chart, 2020 to 2030

It’s worth noting at the outset that by living in ConEd service territory (and New York in general), you’re moving in the right direction on clean energy even if you never lift a finger to move off the default grid supply. New York’s Clean Energy Standard requires the state’s energy providers to transition their electricity mix to 70% renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. That’s up from just 27% renewables in 2020 — definitely a significant improvement in the standard electricity supply.

That said, if you want to get into the fast lane on reducing your climate footprint, and this fits in with the other items you want to cover with your climate budget, there are several options available for ConEd customers who want to max out their clean energy use:

• Third-party supply: If you live in New York, you probably already know via online ads, direct mail, or some other marketing channel that you can buy your electricity supply from a third party company, while ConEd continues to maintain the “wires” to deliver that electricity to your home. Those suppliers offer both standard “brown” power and — central to our purposes — power that’s either 100% “renewable” or some lesser percentage. The state Public Service Commission (the main energy regulatory agency) provides a database where you can search and compare offers on its “Power to Choose” website, as well as some general information for consumers about how shopping for energy works.

• Community renewables: New York is one of an increasing number of states that allow households to support community renewables projects connected to their local power grid, generally by “subscribing” to a share of the project’s output proportional to their home’s annual energy usage and then receiving bill credits (i.e., discounts) based on that share. (You may also hear it called community solar, although other types of projects are eligible under New York’s program.) You can look up available community renewables providers to get more details on current offers through the NYSERDA website, or the clean energy marketplace Energy Solar has a community solar search engine that’s a bit more user-friendly. An important factoid about this option: you can combine it with other approaches on this list for getting your actual electricity supply, since the “subscription” to a project is really an accounting exercise rather than a direct mechanism for powering your home.

• Community choice aggregation: Don’t be confused by the name! This is different than community renewables. The basic concept of community choice aggregation is that local governments can set up a bulk purchasing arrangement to provide the electricity supply for community residents on an opt-out basis (i.e., you can choose not to sign up if you’re not interested). A community aggregation doesn’t necessarily have to include “green” options, but groups like Sustainable Winchester have used this structure as a vehicle to efficiently switch large portions of entire communities over to renewable energy — and to provide other clean energy-related information and services on topics like electric vehicles, home heating electrification, and energy management.

• Home solar: Buying or leasing home solar is certainly an option on the table in New York — at least for homeowners with suitable property — given the statewide NY-SUN program provides incentives as well as special financing programs for home solar installation (plus potential federal tax benefits as well). ConEd and other New York utilities also provide “net metering" rates under which your bill is offset by the electricity you generate, and you get additional bill credits for any extra that you don’t use. The website Energy Sage has a nice overview here discussing how that works, and of course ConEd offers some answers to FAQs as well.

As always, my focus is on helping you figure out on how to make the choice between these options (if you decide this step is on your near-term to-do list) rather than telling you what to choose. With that in mind, here are some key questions to consider:

• Will you actually get clean energy, and what kind? As I explain in Step One, you can’t claim to be getting clean electricity unless you actually pay for and get ownership of the “renewable energy certificate,” or REC, that captures the renewable attribute of that electricity. At this point you may or may not be asking, “how does that fit in with the state Clean Energy Standard”? The answer — whether you asked or not — is that the CES is exactly what it sounds like, a standard. No matter who you get your electricity from (unless you’re generating it yourself), your supplier is required by law to provide you with the percentage of renewable energy set as the target for that year. If you’re paying for “renewable” energy, you’re paying for the amount of clean energy above and beyond that baseline, up to 100%. So how do each of the options above help you fill that gap?

  • Third-party supply and community choice aggregations: Good news and bad news. The good news is that, in addition to the basic information on the Power to Choose website and in public marketing materials, these energy suppliers have to provide an “Environmental Disclosure Label” that specifies what percentage of your supply is from which type of source (e.g., solar, hydropower, biomass, the various fossil fuels, etc.). The bad news is that most of those labels are accessible through a database called NY-GATS that requires you to go through a relatively cumbersome account registration process before you can actually get to the information.

    Is that doable? Yes. Should we be making it incrementally harder for you to figure out where your electricity is sourced from? No. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out over this stuff, folks. Obviously feel free to jump through the hoops, but my recommended shortcut is to just ask your potential supplier to provide you with their Environmental Disclosure Label before you sign up for anything. (Having already logged one short rant, I’ll save the one on the energy industry’s tendency toward opaque, impenetrable terminology for another day.) Once you take a look at that, you can know for sure whether your “100% renewables” match up with what you’re looking for in terms of solar vs. wind vs. hydropower, or some other resource altogether.

  • Community renewables: You may be surprised to hear that the community renewables option is not a one-way ticket to 100% renewables. That’s because the program requires that the RECs associated with your project subscription go to your utility rather than you. So unless the organization selling you a subscription is obtaining an additional supply of RECs to provide you with “renewable” electricity, then you’re not actually getting carbon-free supply — although you are helping to support renewable development overall in your area, which is nothing to sneeze at. Still, you should remember that it’s fine to combine a subscription with a renewable electricity supply that does include the appropriate amount of RECs — so if you want to support local solar while also getting a 100% renewable supply that’s legally yours from a third-party company or community aggregation, have at it. Just make sure you know what you’re getting with each.

  • Home solar: With home solar, you can be confident that — unless you’re selling the RECs generated by your system — you can truthfully claim you’re running on renewable energy. The trick here is that, although you may generate more than you use on average, you’re probably tapping into electricity from the grid at least some of the time (unless you’re relying entirely on battery backup). That grid-supplied electricity, as I explained before, includes at least some significant proportion of fossil fuel resources. Fortunately, just like with community renewables, you can sign up for a renewables offer for your grid supply to complement your own clean power — although as ConEd notes, you should check with your supplier to make sure you understand what your bill will look like under that arrangement.

• How much will you pay? Ultimately you’ll have to price this out as well as you can based on your individual circumstances, whether it’s getting a quote from a solar contractor or looking at different contract terms and rates on the Power to Choose website. As I discuss in more detail in Step One, you should think about whether that price is providing the value you’re looking for when it comes to your preference for type of carbon-free energy (e.g., solar vs. wind vs. hydropower vs. nuclear). One convenient thing about New York is that renewable energy offers do have to be based on RECs from sources that are in-state or sending power into the state, so you can generally take as a given that you’re at least buying regional if not strictly “local.”

  The main distinction to keep in mind among these options is that with third-party supply and community choice aggregation, you’re simply paying an ongoing cost to buy RECs from someone else each month, whereas with community renewables and home solar you’re making an investment through the cost of a subscription or system installation that provides you with bill savings in return. New York’s community renewables program may actually offer guaranteed bill discounts each month — with the tradeoff noted above that you don’t get to claim the renewable energy from “your” project. Bill savings from home solar may be less consistent, but potentially greater overall than with a community renewables subscription, and a solar contractor can help you estimate how much they’ll add up to over time. Home solar also offers longer-term benefits, if they work for your timeframe; data collected by the clean energy marketplace website Energy Sage indicates that home solar in New York will pay for itself in 9.21 years on average, after which any bill savings are pure profit on your solar investment.

Overall, there are a lot more options in ConEd service territory and New York as a whole than in a lot of other places — so if you’re finding yourself overwhelmed by having to sort through them, remember that many people would love to have your problem! But also, you have my sympathies — ConEd and New York as a whole definitely do not disprove the premise of this website, that the path of a clean energy consumer is a lot harder than it needs to be.

Step Two: Stop Burning Fossil Fuels

The theme continues at this step: there’s plenty of assistance available if you’re looking to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to carbon-free electricity for the “big three”: transportation, home heating, and hot water.

Electric Vehicles

I will take a moment to acknowledge that a lot of you may be laughing at the idea of paying for an EV and figuring out charging when you have one of the greatest public transit systems in the country at your disposal, not to mention a viable geography for getting around by bike or on foot. Look, I lived in the New York City metro area for a while, I get it — although did have a car at the time, it probably collected more parking tickets than miles on the odometer. You should absolutely feel free to skip on ahead. If you’ve read through the bulk of this website, you know that I’m all about prioritizing the items that make the biggest impact in reducing your climate footprint.

Publicly available EV charging station map from U.S. Department of Energy, https://afdc.energy.gov/stations

If you are in the market for an electric vehicle, however, the statewide “Drive Clean” program offers a rebate of up to $2000 toward purchasing or leasing an electric vehicle (including plug-in hybrids), as long as you get the vehicle through a participating dealer. That’s a great add-on to the current $7500 federal tax credit if you’re buying a new EV, but the lease option (applicable if you have a term of at least 36 months) is especially nice for those of you who aren’t ready to commit to a purchase but could use a little help on affording a trial run. Once you do hit the road, you can also anticipate perks like toll discounts for state thruways, bridges, and tunnels, and access to HOV lanes even when you’re driving alone through the Thruway Authority's Green Pass Discount Plan, the Port Authority’s Green Pass Program, and the state Clean Pass Program.

As for charging your EV — more on that when we get to Step Three below, but for now I’ll just save you some time by telling you that ConEd and the doesn’t offer any direct incentives for setting up a home charger. That’s different than some other New York utilities, but makes some sense given how much of ConEd’s service territory constitutes multifamily buildings and/or rental units. There are a range of programs covering the state to support installation of public and multifamily chargers, so you should be able to identify charging stations in your vicinity without much trouble. Given all the public charging around, it is doable to drive an EV even if you can’t just pull into your driveway and plug in. And with ongoing efforts like PlugNYC to expand charging options even further, a home charger may end up being as necessary as having a gas pump in your driveway.

Home Heating

New York is all in on “clean heat.” That includes ConEd, so for this item I’d say go ahead and start with the ConEd website to get straight to tailored information about how to switch to electric heat that you can power with your chosen source of renewable energy. If you do live in a one-to-four unit building in New York City proper, it’s also worth checking out ElectrifyNYC — that’s a city resource that offers more of a concierge-level experience and can help you combine a heating conversion with efficiency upgrades and/or solar installation. Otherwise, I don’t have much to add to what’s out there except that you should make sure to go on to Step Three in order to learn how a heat pump can actually save you money on your monthly bills.

Hot Water

ConEd incentive for an electric heat pump hot water heater? Check, to the tune of $1000. Thank you, next, as Ariana Grande would say.

Step Three: Electric Savings

Whether you’ve come out of Step Two with an EV, an electric heat pump, electric hot water heating, or some combination, you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to leverage those investments to lower your electricity bill. In case you don’t remember how this works from Step Three, electricity can be less expensive at certain times of day. So if you get signed up for the right rate and have the right tools to manage your electricity use, then you can achieve the ultimate trifecta: clean electricity, cheap rates, and no sweat.

What are those “right” rates and tools if you’re a ConEd customer? Gee, I’m so glad you asked.

• ”Whole-home” time-of-use rate (non-EV drivers): If you want to go for the whole shebang, ConEd offers a time-of-use rate where you' pay less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kwh) for your electricity service at night and under 10 cents/kwh during the entire fall, winter, and spring. The flip side is that any time from 8 am to midnight in June, July, August, and September, you’ll pay 25.5 cents/kwh. If you get your electricity supply from ConEd and not a third party, you’ll also pay a higher “super-peak” price for your actual power (not just the delivery over the wires) from 2-6 pm on summer weekdays. (Note that this shouldn’t be confused with ConEd’s “Smart Energy Plan,” a separate pilot time-of-use rate program that the utility has been trying out over the last few years but that’s no longer open for enrollment.) This is called a “whole home” rate for potentially obvious reasons: it applies to every kilowatt-hour of electricity you use in your home, whether it’s for your heating, cooling, refrigerator, or Bitcoin mining. If you get your electricity from ConEd, then once you’re enrolled in this rate you have to stay on it for at least 12 months; that requirement doesn’t apply if you buy electricity from a third-party supplier.

• Whole-home time-of-use rate (EV drivers): This is similar to the non-EV time-of-use rate, with two special perks. First, after you’ve been enrolled for 12 months, ConEd will pay you the difference if your bills end up being higher over that year than they would have been under the standard residential rate. Second, if you provide annual proof of your EV registration, you’ll get a monthly discount on your bill of about $4.

• EV-only rate: If you’re an EV driver who wants to keep things simple, ConEd will let you sign up for its time-of-use rate solely for your EV charging — as long as you pay for installation of a separate meter. Once that’s installed, the time-of-use pricing will apply to your EV charging, while the monthly billing for the rest of your electricity usage will stay the same.

• SmartCharge New York: This is another option for EV owners, whether you’re on ConEd’s time-of-use rate or not. Under this program, ConEd will pay you $150 for enrolling in the program, and then you get monetary rewards for charging your EV during off-peak hours (generally nights and weekends) and for avoiding charging during peak times when the grid is more stressed (generally summer afternoons). The details are here , and there’s also a Rewards Calculator you can use to figure out how much you might earn. Unlike with the EV-only rate described above, where you have to install a separate meter for your EV, ConEd monitors your charging by gathering data from your vehicle’s onboard computer.

• Smart Thermostat Program: Like many utilities, ConEd offers a program where they’ll pay you if you let them adjust your smart thermostat to reduce air conditioning use during times when the power grid is stressed, usually on summer weekday afternoons. You must have central air conditioning to participate in the electric program (there’s a part of the program for gas heat as well but that’s outside my purview here), plus you need to have or purchase an eligible thermostat model. ConEd pays you $85 to enroll as well as a $50 discount on a smart thermostat if you don’t already have one. You can always opt out of the thermostat adjustments, but if you participate in enough “events” you’ll earn $25 each summer.

• Other: I try to filter out my innate biases on this site, but when they come through I’ll admit it outright: I ♥ community aggregations. You may remember I mentioned them above as a way that a whole community can buy into renewable energy (with the ability to opt-out, of course). One reason I’m a fan is that once a community starts to get engaged on energy issues, they can try out all kinds of things to complement what might be happening on the federal, state, or utility level. In this case, at least one community aggregation group — Sustainable Westchester again — has partnered with ConEd to launch a “GridRewards” program that offers bill discounts for Westchester County customers if you reduce your electricity usage a few times a year during times of peak grid stress. Even if you’re not eligible for that particular program, it’s worth keeping an ear out for similar types of rewards programs from other community aggregation groups or third-party energy suppliers.

So what are the key considerations as you’re perusing these options? Although ideally in the future you’ll be able to shift your electricity usage with an eye toward both lowering costs and maximizing your reliance on carbon-free resources, for now the main upside is saving money on your bills. And that’s a great thing! The less each of these steps cost, the further you can stretch your climate budget, and the better you’ll feel about recommending them to your friends and family. Of course, it would be most helpful if I could tell you which of these options would in fact lower the bills the most; spoiler alert, I can’t. Instead, I’ll suggest two angles of attack.

First, you could just sign up for the whole-home time-of-use rate option and give it a try. ConEd does have a time-of-use rate calculator, it’s true — and it is worth checking that out to see how easy it is to save hundreds of dollars a year even if a large majority of your usage is during those higher-price “on-peak” hours. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the best way to know if and how much you’ll be able to lower your bills is through actual experience. As long as you sign up with a third-party energy supplier first (I repeat, sign up with a third-party supplier first), then you’ll be allowed to return to ConEd’s standard rate after a couple months if it turns out you are paying too much in “on-peak” charges. My suggestion would be to try for either the May-July or August-October timeframe, so you can see what your bill looks like during some of the higher-demand, higher-priced summer months and also some cooler months when you may be using less electricity and also paying lower on-peak rates. I’d also recommend that before you try this rate, you try to get the tools I discussed in Step Three for automating the management of your energy usage: a smart EV charger, smart thermostat, and some type of control for an electric hot water heater (as relevant to you, of course). If you have those in place, you should be able to “set it and forget it” to make sure your EV, air conditioning, and hot water heating use electricity at off-peak times as much as possible, and you get the lowest bills you can every month.

This “trial-and-(probably not) error” approach is especially a good idea if you' have an electric hot water heater, since the other ConEd options (SmartCharge New York and the Smart Thermostat Program) are aimed at EV and air conditioning only. The whole-home time-of-use rate is the only option, other than GridRewards if you’re eligible, where you can save money by managing all of your Step Two investments: EV, heat pump, and hot water heater. That said, if you don’t feel ready to jump right in or just don’t have time to wrangle all the details, then I’d say it’s perfectly fine to go ahead and sign up for SmartCharge New York, the Smart Thermostat Program, and/or the Westchester GridRewards program as applicable. The advantage of each of those is that there’s only upside — you may get an enrollment credit, and you may also earn credits each month or each summer, but no matter what you won’t have to worry about your bills going up because you used electricity at the “wrong” time. It is true that you may end up missing out on potential savings, but that choice is up to you. Plus you can always revisit the time-of-use rate option down the line, or wait to see what other programs pop up as time goes on.

What about the EV-only time-of-use rate? I hesitate to recommend that just because it’s got a clearly disadvantage versus the SmartCharge New York program: you have to pay for a whole separate meter for your EV. The SmartCharge New York program, on the other hand, works with your car’s computer to accomplish the same thing — letting you save money by charging off-peak — plus with a $150 enrollment credit! Of course feel free to scope it out, especially if you’re confident you can do all your charging off-peak, and let me know how it goes!

And that’s all she wrote, folks. Hopefully all of this information will make it easier for you to take your steps toward a climate smart home. But if you’re still running into big obstacles, stay tuned. ConEd has an application pending right now before the New York Public Service Commission (the state’s utility regulator) in which it’s seeking approval for a range of new and/or updated initiatives relating to clean energy. Depending on the outcome of that proceeding, you may see some helpful new programs and incentives coming down the pike in 2023. Remember in Step Zero when I suggested you actually pay attention to utility marketing materials? It’s because that’s often the best way to find out about these types of new developments. So keep an eye out — and good luck.

So you’re a Florida Power & Light customer looking to switch to clean energy….

You’ve read the steps, you’re excited to get started on your clean energy transition, and you’re a customer of Florida Power & Light (a.k.a. FPL). This blog post is for you! (If you’ve somehow gotten here before the rest of the website, go back to the beginning, otherwise the discussion below will be pretty confusing.)

Now that you’re ready to get going, I have to tell you this one is a good news/bad news sort of situation.

The bad news first: as you may be well aware, FPL is a big monopoly utility. About the biggest in the U.S. with respect to their residential customer base. For a combination of reasons, that means they dominate the field when it comes to potential clean energy programs.

But as a result, I do have some good news: your version of the steps should be relatively straightforward. Check a few options, do some internet searches and make a few phone calls, and you can hopefully figure out your clean energy plan fairly quickly. Price that out (the Step-by-Step Worksheets may help), allocate your climate budget, and you’ll be well on your way to a “climate smart” home. For now, here are a few pointers to get you started:

Step Zero

Let’s start with the fun stuff: the energy audit. Florida Power & Light does currently have a Home Energy Survey program offering free in-person, virtual, or telephonic analyses of your home energy use, as well as an “Energy Manager” online tool that can help you identify potential energy-saving opportunities. Free is good, it’s true. Still, you may not be surprised to hear me suggest that if you can afford a true, in-depth audit with a blower door test, that’s still the best way to identify the targeted home improvements that are most likely to save energy and/or make your home more comfortable. Basically, it’s like a doctor actually doing an x-ray to see if you’ve broken a bone instead of just poking at you from the outside — better results and less painful all around. Fortunately, the Nate the House Whisperer HVAC 2.0 network has some coverage in Florida Power & Light territory, and if none of those folks can help you they can probably offer some suggestions of who else to call. Hopefully whoever you land on can also help guide you through Step Two if you’re switching to an electric heat pump — so you’ve killed two birds with one stone.

Once you do have some expert recommendations for ways to make your home more efficient, FPL offers programs providing rebates or other incentives for new ceiling insulation, air conditioning, outdoor lighting, and home construction (in conjunction with your builder). These days Florida is pretty tough when it comes to approving energy efficiency programs (many would say overly so), which means the limited incentives that do get the green light tend to be targeted toward measures that are very effective in producing energy savings above-and-beyond what you’d get in the marketplace. In other words, even if the up-front rebates in the FPL programs are not huge, the fact that they exist at all is an indicator that, for many people, these measures are likely to provide robust energy savings in the long term.

(Important note: I linked to the page with all the available conservation programs in case those change over time, but the “FPL Home” option is not one of the pre-vetted efficiency programs that has been through any analysis to show their programs save you energy or money. That’s actually a separate, unregulated business run by FPL that they’ve apparently thrown in there to give themselves an advertising boost.)

What about natural gas? As you know from Step Two, if you’re in the market for new appliances or a new home I’m going to encourage you to switch to electric, especially for home heating — and as you’ll see in Step Three below, that could actually save you some money on your FPL bill. That said, if you’re going to stick with natural gas you should certainly try to use less, so go ahead and check for efficiency programs. Many of you will get service from Florida City Gas, which does offer some efficient appliance rebates, and other utilities may have programs of their own.

Okay, you’ve identified some investments to make your home more efficient and hopefully lower your utility bills along the way. Next up is the actual clean energy part of the equation….

Step One

Let’s set the baseline here. FPL’s most recent annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that about 28% of its 2021 generation supply was from carbon-free resources, with 22% from nuclear, 6% from solar, and the remaining 72% primarily from natural gas with a small slice of “other” (coal or oil?). FPL plans to build additional solar in the next few years, but carbon-free resources are still likely to be less than a third of its total. Bottom line: there’s certainly room for FPL customers to make changes to lower the climate impact of your electricity supply.

What options are there for you to do that? As I said before — not that complicated. FPL has two programs to let you buy solar from them, along with a “net metering” rate for home solar:

• FPL SolarTogether: Wait, you say, this link says they’re fully subscribed? Take heart — as you can see if you check out their FAQs, you can get on the waitlist now, and more spots will be opening up in January 2023. That’s because this program basically lets you invest in a small piece of big solar projects owned by FPL (under specific terms and conditions) and get proportional credits based on the value of the electricity generated from those projects. FPL will have some new projects starting up as of 2023, allowing the program to grow, with potentially even more space down the road as FPL expands its solar portfolio. Depending on your situation and how the terms and conditions change over time, the SolarTogether program offers the possibility that you’ll end up turning a profit as you “pay off” your share of the projects and they continue to produce revenue that’s credited back to you. Note that the renewable energy certificates for your share of the solar project will be retired in your name, which means you can legally claim you’re using clean energy. (I’m not offering legal advice, though!)

• FPL SolarNow: This is an FPL version of “community” solar (scare quotes intentional), where you can sign up to pay an extra $9 per month toward the construction and/or maintenance of small solar projects distributed across local community sites (a park, zoo, museum, etc.). The solar power from the projects (i.e., the corresponding renewable energy certificate) does not go to the subscribers, but instead is counted toward renewable usage by all FPL customers.

• Home solar with net metering: FPL currently offers a “net metering” rate for solar and other types of renewable energy installations at customers’ homes (including those with battery backup) under which you can offset your electricity use to lower your monthly bills, and also get credit for any extra power at the same rate you’d pay for it. I say “currently” because as of the date this post was written, there’s a bill awaiting either the signature or veto of Governor DeSantis that would allow FPL (and other Florida utilities) to significantly increase charges and reduce credits for customers with home solar. Since I’m aiming to stay away from politics, no comment on whether that’s a good or a bad idea, but if you want to find many other people’s opinions you can search for information on House Bill 741 and see what’s out there.

So which of these is the best option? Only you can figure out what’s a smart choice for you, but of course I wouldn’t be a good clean energy nerd if I didn’t try to highlight some important questions to ponder:

• Will you actually get clean energy? As I explain in Step One, you can’t claim to be getting clean electricity unless you actually pay for and get ownership of the “renewable energy certificate” that captures the renewable attribute of that electricity. On that front, the SolarNow program is a clear “no” — FPL is upfront that the renewable energy is credited toward all of their customers, and you also won’t know exactly how much additional solar energy is actually resulting from your monthly payment. If you want to support clean energy for the whole grid or just don’t have any better options right now, that may not be a dealbreaker, but it’s important to understand.

• What kind of clean energy is it? Some people have strong feelings about what kind of solar they want — smaller projects distributed throughout communities or large, “utility-scale” projects. If you want to join me in the energy weeds, you can read about some of the arguments for each here. I’m not taking sides, other than to say many varieties of solar can play a beneficial role in the grid depending on the circumstances. But if you care about this issue then it’s worth noting the SolarTogether program is definitely an example of utility-scale solar while the SolarNow and home solar options fit in the distributed solar model.

• How much will you get? Looking ahead to Step Two, you may end up increasing your electricity use over time. If you’re not doing that all at once, you may want to think about how you can add to your carbon-free electricity supply down the road, whether that’s by increasing your share in a SolarTogether project, waiting on a home solar project until after you’ve bought an EV and know how much electricity you’ll need for charging, adding more solar panels down the road, or some other approach.

• How much will you pay? Ultimately you’ll have to price this out as well as you can based on your individual circumstances, but in theory both SolarTogether and home solar could end up turning you some kind of profit in the end since they allow for you to invest in a solar project directly — either FPL’s or your very own — and get the value of the electricity generated, whatever that might be. In both cases, there’s no way to know exactly what that value is up front, so like any investment you’ll have to accept some risk as to what payoff (or loss) you might end up with. For SolarTogether, that risk comes from the variable price of electricity and FPL’s whims as the entity that sets the terms of the program (under the regulatory supervision of the Florida Public Service Commission). For home solar, the risk is in potential changes to the “net metering” rate, as noted above, and whether you might get added value from selling your renewable energy certificates or in your home itself if and when you want to sell it. Either way, you could get a better or worse deal depending on the upfront costs of your investment and long-term price of the (renewable) electricity you’re paying for. It’s up to you to evaluate that risk and potential returns. That may feel scary, but it’s the same thing you do outside the clean energy world when you’re making any major purchase and hoping you get what you pay for.

Step Two

In what may be a nice change of pace, this step is fairly short in terms of unique considerations for an FPL customer. The main thing to know is that over the next few years FPL will be building out more public EV charging stations along major highways and also starting a pilot program where they install a Level 2 charger at your home and allow free off-peak charging (more on that in Step Three below), with a total investment in EVs of about $200 million through 2025. To the extent you’re nervous about being able to access affordable EV charging, that should be a big help. It’s also worth noting that FPL’s rebate program for air conditioners does cover heat pumps, as long as they’re installed by an approved contractor (although I’d still start with the HVAC 2.0 network at Step Zero).

Step Three

Since FPL is one of the utilities that has installed “smart meters” for its residential customers, there are a few options for lowering your bill by avoiding electricity use at those peak demand times I talked about in Step Three. Here’s the current menu from FPL:

• Time of Use rate: I start with this one because it’s the most comprehensive, offering rate discounts for any home electricity usage you can shift “off-peak” (overnight, weekends, and holidays for the whole year; morning in the summer; and mid-day in the winter). That does mean you’ll pay a higher rate for any usage during the peak times — weekday summer afternoons and evenings, and weekday winter mornings and evenings. FPL does offer a phone consultation option to get an analysis of how that might work for you based on your individual usage patterns, but remember that they can’t account for you taking steps to change those patterns in the future. If you buy an EV or get a smart thermostat that will manage your HVAC in conjunction with a time-of-use rate (e.g., ecobee with eco+ or Google Nest), then you may improve your savings potential. Fortunately, FPL allows for a one-month trial period to decide if this program is a “good fit,” after which you can go back to the standard rate if you’d like.

• On Call program: This is what’s called a “demand response” program, where you get bill credits if you let FPL turn off certain home appliances during times of peak electricity demand (for up to three to four hours a day) in order to ease the stress on the grid and prevent blackouts. You do have to have central air conditioning to enroll, since that tends to be the biggest slice of peak electricity use for residential customers, and if you have central electric heating you’ll have to include that too. If you want additional credits, you can opt in for your electric water heater and single-speed pool pump (if you have them). This program actually doesn’t involve any “smart” technology at all — FPL will come out and install controls directly on your appliances that enable remote control, and simply hit the “off” button during grid emergencies. The good news is that you get a monthly credit on your bill whether or not any emergency actually happens — all the details are here.

• Home EV charging pilot: For those of you who want to take things a little more slowly, as noted above FPL will be launching a special program for discounted “off-peak” charging for EVs in summer 2022. Since the program hasn’t launched yet I can’t tell you that much about it other than you may be able to save money on fueling up an electric vehicle; you can sign up here to get notified as more details are announced.

Which options should you choose? Wrong question — at least for me. I can tell you what you might think about in making that choice for yourself, though:

• How much certainty do you want? Putting aside the EV charging program, since I don’t have all the details on that yet, the difference between the FPL time-of-use rate and On Call program mainly boils down to certainty, or lack thereof, on two fronts. The On Call program has very defined parameters in terms of the amount you’ll be paid each month for enrolling, but you won’t know whether or when FPL might turn off your enrolled appliances — under the applicable terms and conditions they can do that whenever they want, for up to three hours for air conditioning or heat and four hours for hot water or a pool pump. The time-of-use rate, on the other hand, leaves you in complete control of your electricity use, but doesn’t offer any guarantees as to how high your bill might go if you’re blasting your air conditioning or running the dishwasher on a summer afternoon.

• How flexible are you? I would never say that a time-of-use rate or demand response program is the right choice for everyone. That said, those of you who are in the office on summer weekdays (do people still do that?) or who are willing and able to pay a couple extra bucks to do laundry on a Tuesday morning in December are more likely to be able to accommodate changes to your energy use under either type of program. If you have a smart thermostat that can manage HVAC use for you “around” a time-of-use rate, that may take a big load off your shoulders too. And of course, the FPL EV charging pilot may end up offering the opportunity to dip your toe in the water with one of your most flexible categories of electricity use to give you a taste of how smart energy management can actually work for you.

• What’s your climate budget? I said it before, but I’ll say it again: if this step doesn’t save you money or even increases your bills a little bit each month, it may still be a worthwhile endeavor — if you can afford it. Especially with a utility like FPL that’s moving more toward solar energy, adjusting your electricity use can help integrate those solar resources into the grid while keeping costs down for everyone. Something to think about.

Well, that’s all folks. Since this is my first shot at this type of blog post, I’d be glad to get any feedback you might care to offer. Otherwise, I hope this was useful — and as much fun for you as it was for me! (Ha ha, there’s no way you had as much fun as me.)

Let she who is without sin cast the first stone….

I started this website because I know so much and I’m so perfect, right? Exactly the opposite. Part of my reason for thinking about these issues is that I messed this up. My family lives in a house that we (okay, our contractors) built from the ground up in 2018, and although in the scheme of things it turned out pretty well, we definitely did not faithfully follow the steps laid out on this website. Where did I go wrong?

Step Zero: Here we’re okay, partly because new construction is generally fairly efficient and partly because we did choose a contractor that we knew would do all the right things on this front. (We had a great chat about “Home Energy Rating System” scores!) Although I of course wanted to be climate-friendly, this decision was just as much about comfort and cost — after being married to my husband for close to a decade, I knew what our utility bills would look like in the summer if he had to blast the air conditioning to stay cool. The result was a house with energy performance well above average.

Step One: Again, not so bad on this front. Although we didn’t do it right when we moved into the house for various financial and life reasons, about a year later we went through the process of installing home solar. That made a lot of sense for us, since we hope to be in the house for long enough for the system to pay off and start getting us a return on our investment, and we have good south-facing roof space without much shading from trees. We didn’t install battery backup due to cost and the fact that we’re generally okay with the occasional short power outage, but might look at that again down the line if the economics change, or explore using an EV battery for backup in emergencies as that capability develops. Overall, about 80% of our energy use per year is now from our solar panels by a back of the envelope calculation — not bad given Ohio winters are not the sunniest. The two items still on our to-do list are to figure out options to buy clean energy supply to offset that remaining 20%, and to install new panels as we increase our electricity use. (More on that below.)

Step Two: Here’s where I fell down on the job. Yes, we have gas heat. (Gasp!) Where we live in Ohio, that’s often the default since natural gas is pretty cheap. We definitely could have afforded electric heat, though, and I’m confident that we could make a heat pump work in this climate given we have a pretty efficient house overall. But when we were building the house I was new to the ways of “electrify everything” and also had a fair bit going on in my personal life, so I honestly didn’t think to talk to the builder about electric heat. Mea culpa for now — and trust me, this is top of my list for our next major “climate smart” home investment as our furnace and air conditioner get older.

The good news is that we did take the opportunity to wire our garage for Level 2 EV charging, and as we speak I’m on the waiting list for a plug-in SUV (a Volkswagen ID.4 if you’re curious). I’ll be retiring my current car about 5 years early, but plan to get my money’s worth in low-cost home charging (carbon-free from our solar panels as much as possible), especially since I have a long commute for work.

Step Three: This is an interesting one. We’ve had a smart meter for a couple years now, but there just aren’t many options available for us right now in terms of rates or programs where we can save money or use “greener” electricity through smart energy management. It used to be my job to try to push for those types of options; now, I may take my own advice and try talking to my state public utilities commission and legislative representatives about the need for changes that could improve household access to cheaper, cleaner energy.