Grantee Research Project Results
Community-engaged Co-Design of Residential Electrification for a Just and Sustainable Energy Transition
EPA Grant Number: R840562Title: Community-engaged Co-Design of Residential Electrification for a Just and Sustainable Energy Transition
Investigators: Harper, Krista , Caverly, Nick , Arku, Raphael , Barchers, Camille , Krupczynski, Joseph , Baker, Erin D. , Ash, Michael , Cardenas, Juan Camilo , Shenoy, Prashant , Weil, Ben , Markowitz, Ezra
Current Investigators: Harper, Krista , Caverly, Nick , Barchers, Camille , Arku, Raphael , Baker, Erin D. , Krupczynski, Joseph , Shenoy, Prashant , Cardenas, Juan Camilo , Ash, Michael , Weil, Ben , Markowitz, Ezra
Institution: University of Massachusetts Amherst
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: September 1, 2023 through May 10, 2025
Project Amount: $1,111,418
RFA: Drivers and Environmental Impacts of Energy Transitions in Underserved Communities. (2022) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Watersheds , Endocrine Disruptors , Environmental Engineering , Environmental Justice , Social Science , Air Quality and Air Toxics , Air
Objective:
Our community-based participatory research (CBPR) project has three primary research objectives: (1) to understand how low- and moderate-income (LMI) households and neighborhoods in an environmental justice community experience and envision the 21st century energy transition and identify community priorities; (2) to rapidly develop a robust community-based research platform for designing scalable solutions to the challenge of energy-efficient electrification of the nation’s aging housing infrastructure; and (3) to work with local housing partners to implement and test community co-designed interventions and prototypes to assess their efficacy in addressing household priorities, including indoor air quality, comfort, and cost. Our site, Holyoke, MA (pop. 40,000, 50% Latinx and 5% African American), is an environmental justice community and a strategic place to study barriers to household electrification.
Approach:
Our project will integrate ethnographic and behavioral economic methods with engineering analysis and air quality testing, all under an umbrella of CBPR grounded in participatory planning. Based on pilot research, we expect community members to prioritize cost-efficient heating and cooling in older apartments and houses. A potential co-designed project might identify the best ways to encourage public housing authorities and private landlords to upgrade properties with hydronic heat pumps for heating and cooling. Co-designed research might investigate barriers to upgrading housing with heat pumps, and a co-designed intervention might track the installation process and residents’ comfort, costs, and indoor air quality to assess potential co-benefits of energy-efficient electrification.
Expected Results:
We will create knowledge around the drivers, barriers, and environmental co-benefits to household electrification in underserved communities; and will build a platform for continuing collaboration between the community and researchers. We will provide specific co-designed solutions (such as technological design, incentives, and practitioner toolkits around heat pumps in public housing), pilot implementation, and evaluations that will allow these to be scaled up.
Publications and Presentations:
Publications have been submitted on this project: View all 4 publications for this projectJournal Articles:
Journal Articles have been submitted on this project: View all 2 journal articles for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
public policy, decision making, community-based, preferences, engineering, social science, modeling, monitoring, indoor air, particulates, nitrogen oxides, Northeast, housing sectorProgress and Final Reports:
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.