After wildfires, rebuilding right

As the shock of the Los Angeles wildfires transmutes into rebuilding, homeowners in Altadena and Pacific Palisades are navigating a myriad of pathways back home. Do I rebuild, or go somewhere else? If I do rebuild, should it look like it did before, or something completely different?  Can I afford all of this? What will my neighborhood feel like in 2030?

Luckily, there’s one decision that doesn’t need consternation - and that’s how to think about heating things up in rebuilt homes. At Harvest, we’re uniquely positioned to help wildfire victims rebuild with resilient, clean, gas-free heating, hot water, and A/C - but there’s a lot more to understand when it comes to rebuilding better.

On Monday, I sat down with leaders from the US Green Building Council California to understand how fire victims can frame up a more resilient future, for themselves and for the world.

Ben Stapleton is the executive director at USGBC-CA, and Sarah Wolf is the Sustainability Career Coordinator there.  Sarah is also an Altadena resident who lost her home in the Eaton fire.

Trent Wolbe: Why is electrification so important to rebuilding after the LA Wildfires?

Ben Stapleton: All-electric construction is cheaper than gas, especially when you're looking at having to potentially run gas lines again that have been damaged. Going electric also reduces long-term energy costs, especially when you have a high performance, well-insulated building. 

It's going to create a healthier environment for you and your family - especially when we think about other disasters, like earthquakes. Anytime we're combusting anything in a house, we’re increasing asthma risks and creating greenhouse gas emissions. 

Our policy in California is already headed to a place where we're going to have all-electric code for new development in the very near future. If someone's rebuilding, it makes sense to rebuild in a way that's going to help futureproof your home, and reduce the need to potentially redo your energy systems in years to come.

 TW: Sarah, are there any notable updates to building codes that will change the way people need to view compliance as they rebuild?

Sarah Wolf: My street in Altadena, which was previously considered a typical suburban street,  will now be considered in the high or very high fire hazard zone. So in addition to meeting Title 24 energy requirements, we’ll also need to meet chapter 7A of the building code. So we’ll need things like Class A materials for roofing.
The house that I lost was built in 1924 - a Jane's Cottage, if you’re familiar with that architectural style. It was stucco, and had no insulation. It was not built to withstand current climate impacts. So I'm not looking to rebuild exactly what I lost. 

Rebuilding with gas infrastructure has not been banned, and there are people with homes still standing that have a gas furnace. But, for us, when we're rebuilding, safety is number one. In the post-fire photos of my house, my gas meter was not there anymore. It was gone. So, that tells me the fire burned really hot. Maybe there was an explosion. There was no gas shut off valve for wildfire, only for earthquake. It's just not safe to have gas in a very high fire zone.

Interestingly, our temporary housing in Mount Washington is all-electric. It has an induction stove. The air quality is better, and it just runs more efficiently. I really like it. You don't really need to run your A/C. It has well-fitted windows. So when we’re rebuilding, just meeting code will help us have a more resilient home. 

There's also the cost factor of just not having another system. Putting in a gas line, you have to call out a plumber and lay pipe and get it connected to a utility and buy the gas furnace. It's simpler and more streamlined to go all-electric. You just cut out one utility altogether.  With the incentives that are available for heat pumps, to me it's a no-brainer.

TW: Is this post-wildfire rebuilding moment going to push us more in the direction of an all-electric home landscape? 

BS: This will advance our efforts to go electric quite considerably. We lost about 14,000 homes in Altadena and the Palisades, and my goal originally was to try to support 3,000 homes in going through this process to rebuild more sustainably, more resiliently, all-electric. 

But after talking with folks who went through the Marshall fire in Colorado, I found out that about 80% of their homes were rebuilt all-electric. I think we’ll hit a similar number. They did that because they leaned on a lot of the resources the county had put together to help them navigate that process. 

So we can leverage this moment to train contractors, and create access to information around going all-electric.

SW: There are opportunities where entire neighborhoods are gone. You could imagine just not having a gas line when they rebuild. Something like that does require buy-in, and deciding as a group, which is always challenging. Everyone's on a different schedule. Everyone has different budgets. I don't want to speak for a whole community of 42,000 people, but I do see this as an opportunity.

If you have to retrofit your whole house from gas to electric, that can be very expensive. But if you're starting from scratch, why not just go electric? 

Sometimes there is a higher upfront cost to, say, putting in better insulation or windows or an insulated roof. But you save money with your heating bills, or by not really having a heating bill, if you build your house in a high performance way. 

A few years ago people were experiencing very high gas bills. People were posting on Nextdoor -  “I had a $1,000 gas bill. What's going on?”  And they weren't using more gas. The rates change and there's that unpredictability to it.

‍TW: What resources is USGBC-CA developing to help Angelenos rebuild more resiliently?

SW: Prior to these LA fires we already had a resident toolkit for home hardening. We run two training courses for construction professionals, and wildfire defense courses for landscapers in English and Spanish. So we were already really well set up for educating people and contractors about creating defensible space around houses.

After January 7th, we quickly pivoted to wildfire recovery. We wanted to provide resources for people wherever they're at in their process, so we released a wildfire rebuilding guide. It focuses on ways homeowners can think about how to make your community safer during your rebuild. 

We're already working on the next version of the guide, which will focus more on incentives and building using all electric, more sustainable construction.

We also have a matchmaking service - residents can be matched with professionals to help them with energy modeling or solar panel installations, or whatever their needs are. We've run community workshops in Altadena and in the Palisades, and those will continue. We just launched our rebuild marketplace, a group buying platform where groups of homeowners, builders, and architects can group purchase products. So, if everybody needs to buy HardiBoard, for example, at the same time, they can use this website to buy it at a group discount.

BS:  The wildfires were a huge tragedy for so many people. But I think we can rebuild the right way, and we'll have better communities because of it. Doing these things can accelerate electrification.  This is what we need to be doing right now. 

SW: Electrification tools like The Switch Is On and Quitcarbon are great. Even going to SCE's website and looking at the different incentives available for electrification is a good start. LADWP has a lot of incentives as well. 

TW: Things are obviously very much in flux at a national level when it comes to climate resilience. How can California continue to lead the green building effort?

BS:  California needs to show leadership in light of what's happening on the federal level, to show that we can electrify our homes. We can create healthier environments for our families–and do these things while growing the economy, and increasing affordability.

California has focused on climate policy and the environment for the last couple decades. We've been able to grow our economy at the same time–we're now the fourth largest economy in the world.

And look, it's not like we've done everything perfectly. We’ve  made our mistakes. But we are making progress. That's what's important - showing the rest of the country what’s possible.

TW: What does the resilient, efficient community of the future look like for you?
BS: When I look at a vision for these future communities, we could have homes that are built using healthy materials, they're running on all-electric equipment like heat pump water heating and HVAC, they're running on electric appliances for laundry and drying.

They're using native plants and they've located their landscape in strategic ways to reduce their risk of fire. They've embraced passive house design that better leverages positioning of their home on their property. They reduce long-term energy costs through having more tightly developed envelopes for the homes. 

We know wildfires will return, but hopefully these homes are safer because they're built to better standards. We'll bounce back because buildings are better adapted to do that. 

SW: I know people don’t get too excited about things like like siding and insulation, but just knowing that the house is well built and can withstand not just future fires, but can withstand flood, can withstand high temperatures, windstorms, all those things that my little cottage was just not not built to withstand.

And I've also talked to some neighbors about community solar. There is interest in going almost off-grid, just having your own solar, and maybe using the schools or community centers as hubs for resiliency. And I love that idea. I hope we can pull it off.