King County households can get low- to no-cost heat pumps - The Seattle Times

King County households can get low- to no-cost heat pumps | The Seattle Times

SKYWAY — Sharing tea at their dining room table, Alexandra Lui and David Tam reminisced about the meals shared with friends and family over the 40 years in their home.

It was the place where they raised their kids and now where they hope to spend their golden years.

But as summers have grown hotter Lui said their home can become unbearable, with temperatures sometimes climbing above 100 degrees. At the same time, Lui said the cost of oil to heat their home in the winter has risen from about a dollar per gallon in the 1990s to more than $5 last year.

They decided they needed to upgrade their system. About five years ago they bought their first portable air conditioner, but they had their eyes on a heat pump. With the help of a government subsidy, they now have one.

King County footed 80% of the bill for their roughly $34,000 heat pump and upgraded electrical panel. Through the Energize program, the county is helping Skyway and White Center residents with up to 100% of the cost of new heat pumps. The pilot program launched in 2023 with $1.95 million in bonds backed by King County’s general fund and $600,000 in grant funding from the Washington State University Community Energy Efficiency Program.

Last week, the program was awarded another roughly $2.6 million from the state’s carbon pricing program.

Heat pump installations have been on the rise as manufacturers offer models that are more effective at lower temperatures. These units efficiently cool and heat, helping to replace older systems that use gas, propane and oil furnaces that emit climate-warming gases.

Single-family homes, apartments and commercial buildings account for nearly half of all annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

Washington has largely been at the forefront of the building electrification effort. A new state building code requires energy-efficient heating and cooling in all new residential and commercial buildings, and the state’s Climate Commitment Act raises money from polluting businesses to pay for incentives like these.

“If we ignore this climate change problem — people really will die because of heat,” Lui said.

Why Skyway and White Center

Lui and Tam’s home was one of the more than 400,000 in the county heated by fossil fuels, according to a 2022 estimate from the County Assessor’s Office.

When the county began hosting heat pump workshops last summer, the need was clear. Some people had an oil furnace, but it had recently stopped working. Others hadn’t had heat in years, or didn’t have functioning electricity.

The Seattle area’s historically marginalized neighborhoods have fewer trees and less green space. Residents are more likely to be exposed to air pollution and heat, and to live with preexisting health conditions.

For example, on a hot summer day, communities along the Duwamish River might experience temperatures 10 or more degrees higher than neighborhoods up north like Ballard, a King County study revealed. The disparities of how urban neighborhoods experience heat are only further exacerbated by climate change.

King County officials decided to focus this pilot project on homeowners and renters in single-family homes in two diverse communities with high rates of pollution. They wanted to make sure the rebate kicked in immediately and wasn’t a reimbursement later, said Nicole Sanders, the county’s building decarbonization program manager. And the county offers interpretation and translation to nine different languages at every step of the process.

The county hopes to eventually expand the assistance to apartments and other multifamily housing units.

After attending a workshop last fall, Lui and Tam completed an online form with questions about their income and heating source. Then King County found a contractor, Lui said. Resicon came in to take a look and wrote up a quote that would be approved by the county. A few weeks later the contractors completed the installation over the course of two days.

The county program offers coverage of up to 100% of the installation costs for low-income households — households of four making $117,200 a year or less — and up to 80% of installation costs for households making below 120% of the area median income, or about an annual income of $175,800 for a household of four. The costs covered include the heat pump, labor and any electrical panel upgrades needed.

The county has completed 16 installations so far — 14 through the energize program and 2 through referrals to other programs. More than 30 households are in the process of scheduling installs or work orders, and another 70 applications are being reviewed.

Of the installs through the county program, the majority have been in low-income households. Five of the homes were heated by oil, six by gas, two primarily with wood heat and one home had no working heat. None of the installs have been for renters so far, but projects are in the pipeline.

The average install cost has been about $21,000 per home, with the money paid directly to the contractor. The cost varies depending on the size of the home and any necessary electrical upgrades.

The additional funding from the state Climate Commitment Act will about double the money for the program, allowing the county to expand to additional households and in-home day care facilities. The county anticipates it will restart workshops this summer, and interested residents should go to energizekingcounty.org for more information.

“Fossil fuels are harmful to our health and killing our planet,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine in a statement. “With this funding, we’ll expand the Energize Program so more families can replace polluting oil and gas furnaces with clean, efficient, electric heat pumps.”

Other state rebate programs

The state Legislature has appropriated a total of $80 million for the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate Program. Of that, $75 million was earmarked for rebates and incentives for households and small businesses, and $5 million is for heat pumps in adult family homes.

The funding — revenue generated through the sale of greenhouse gas emission allowances to polluting businesses, through Washington’s Climate Commitment Act— will go to existing and new local programs that provide rebates and other incentives for heat pumps and other home and small business electrification.

The state recently awarded about $40 million in grants to local rebate programs including $5.3 million for Snohomish County PUD, $4.1 million for the city of Ellensburg and $3.1 million for the city of Seattle. The city of Seattle offers residents a $2,000 instant rebate to switch from oil heat to an electric heat pump, in addition to providing no-cost conversions for income-qualified households.

The state won’t offer incentives directly, but plans to launch an online portal in the coming weeks that will allow anyone interested to search for these and other rebates and incentive offers available throughout the state.