Washington, DC, law aims to electrify 30,000 low-income homes by 2040

Washington, DC, will seek to electrify 30,000 low-income homes by 2040 as part of the district's plan to phase out natural gas use in the building sector.

The Council of the District of Columbia on April 2 voted unanimously to pass the Healthy Homes and Residential Electrification Amendment Act of 2024. The bill would task the DC Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) with establishing the Breathe Easy program, which would fully fund retrofits to qualifying households that choose to electrify.

The program would supplement the federal Inflation Reduction Act's home electrification rebates, which can total up to $14,000 per household. The cost of fully electrifying an existing home in DC can total about $30,000, leaving a gap that low-income households cannot afford, according to council member Charles Allen, who sponsored the bill.

"As we make that transition, which we must, this is how we do it without leaving anyone behind," Allen said in an April 2 news release.

The Healthy Homes bill still requires a second vote in the City Council before final passage. Members of Mayor Muriel Bowser's administration expressed support for the bill during committee meetings.

Washington, DC, and other cities have begun implementing policies to ensure that new construction is all-electric. The law would accelerate the work of decarbonizing DC's existing building stock, which accounted for 72% of the district's greenhouse gas emissions in 2020.

30,000 electrification retrofits

The legislation would direct the DOEE to submit a plan for administering the Breathe Easy program by Sept. 30, 2024, but the legislation outlined the program's broad contours.

The DOEE will face three mile markers ahead of its Dec. 31, 2040, deadline to complete 30,000 residential electrification retrofits. It must complete 2,500 retrofits by the end of 2027, 10,000 by year-end 2032 and 20,000 by year-end 2037. The agency would report annually on its progress toward hitting the targets.

The retrofits would be funded through DC's Sustainable Energy Trust Fund, which is financed through a surcharge on electric and gas ratepayers. The DOEE would potentially use private contractors to conduct the retrofits.

DOEE plans to use about $20 million per year to carry out the Healthy Homes bill, Allen said during an April 2 DC Council meeting.

The bill authorized DOEE to partially fund retrofits for moderate-income households, with the amount determined by a sliding scale based on household income. Only low-income retrofits would count toward the target levels outlined in the bill.

Final bill backs off gas penalty

The Breathe Easy program would also provide education and training for contractors to carry out retrofits. The program's name reflected research that suggests combusting gas within homes can contribute to negative health outcomes, including an increased risk of childhood asthma. The gas industry has disputed those findings.

In an earlier version, the Healthy Homes bill proposed a surcharge on building permits for residences that included appliances and building systems that combust fossil fuels. The DC Council's Committee on Transport and the Environment, which produced the final version of the bill, said it would consider ways to discourage fossil fuel use in the future but decided to focus for now on encouraging the transition through voluntary steps.

Washington Gas Light Co. opposed the provisions. Following the bill's passage, the company said it wanted to work with the district to leverage its "established and reliable" gas distribution system. The AltaGas Ltd. subsidiary has focused on "pragmatic and positive steps" like modernizing its infrastructure, helping customers install energy-efficient technology and introducing low-carbon fuels like renewable natural gas.

"Washington Gas prioritizes our customers' health and safety in addition to energy choice, affordability and reliability," the company told S&P Global Commodity Insights. "We are committed to helping the district achieve its climate goals."

Potomac Electric Power Co., the district's electric utility, supports DC's decarbonization goals and its "efforts to create an equitable energy transition which prioritizes incentives for low- and moderate-income residents to electrify," the Exelon Corp. subsidiary said in an email.