KLA Perspectives

Why a “Heat Pump 101” Workshop Isn’t Enough

If you're reading this, you probably already know that a heat pump heats and cools your home in one system, using electricity instead of fossil fuel and can be 3x more efficient. Heat pumps work to bring down energy bills and climate pullution.

As local governments focused on affordability and climate solutions, getting residents to switch to heat pumps is the sweet spot. But it’s not as easy as it could be.

Climate change becomes personal long before it becomes a policy discussion. It can look like a hotter house during a heat wave, a basement that floods after heavy rain, a heating system that needs replacing, or a transportation choice that suddenly affects a household budget.

That is why climate change is not only an environmental issue or a political issue. It is a human issue. People experience it through the places they live, the systems they rely on and the decisions they are already making.

For local governments, that creates an opportunity. Residents do not need to understand every part of a climate action plan before they act. They need a clear next step that fits the decision already in front of them.

As many of us are gearing up for an extra long holiday weekend, it will be hard to leave “our work” at the office. I have been tracking the weather in my hometown of Boston as well as in a number of my client cities particularly in the Northeast, and it is hard to ignore the oppressive heat wave that is hitting the country (and, heck, the whole world) right now.

Meanwhile here in Massachusetts, about 70 cities and towns have just completed and sent in their final reports for a new state program called the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program. Through the MVP process, cities and towns are engaging key stakeholders and the public to identify four key hazards, the assets that will be impacted by these hazards, and the solutions that can enhance their resilience to these hazards.

And right now one of those hazards is hard to escape: the heat. 

While conversations and news coverage of climate change impacts often focus on sea level rise or flooding due to more intense storm events, it is the sustained temperature increases that is our biggest enemy at this moment in time.

To this day one of the best taglines I’ve seen is “Local Action Moves the World.” That’s from ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability where I was the US Services Director from 2005-2009 and had the pleasure of working with hundreds of local governments across the nation. That line reflects the reality on the ground for a myriad of issues where progress is stymied at the national and international levels. None more so than climate change.

I might not be in Bonn this week for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) Conference of the Parties -- commonly known as COP 23 -- but I’m glad to see that mayors and other local government elected officials from around the globe will once again be there en masse to showcase the impact the local communities and leaders have on climate action.

The frequency and severity of flooding are on the rise in the age of climate change, and in no place is that more apparent than Houston -- a city that is watching Hurricane Harvey barrel towards it even as it still dries out from other heavy rains and flooding.

When you think about the arc of climate change awareness and action in this country, it’s hard not to put former Vice President Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” film -- which hit theaters back in 2006 and has “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” coming out August 4, 2017 -- among the most important events.

At KLA we’ve worked with dozens of cities and counties over the years on plans. Climate action plans. Adaptation plans. Sustainability plans. Energy master plans. And let me tell you, after the blood, sweat, tears and sheer hours that go into one of those plans, it can feel like the journey is over. But a plan is not a destination. It is, in fact, the starting point.

There’s nothing like hopping on to social media to see an empowering headline like “Climate change is happening now -- here’s eight things we can do to adapt to it” and then noticing the byline is one of your most esteemed colleagues. That was my much-needed jolt yesterday when I read the Guardian headline in my Facebook feed posted by the article’s author Missy Stults.