The Brief

All-electric everything is the way of the future as cities across the Southland — and the world — work to get off gas and coal power to lower planet-heating emissions and local air pollution by supplying electricity via cleaner options such as solar and wind.

And buildings are where we use a lot of that dirty power. In L.A., largely the use of gas and electricity in buildings makes them account for more than 40% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. As we transition to a cleaner supply of electricity and electrify homes at the same time, those emissions will go down.

There’s a lot of money from the local to state to federal level to help folks begin the electric transition at home. One place to start? That old water heater.

Heating water is typically the second-largest source of energy use in a home, behind heating and cooling air. Electric heat pump water heaters are three to four times more efficient than gas ones, which can help with your bill, depending on how you use it. (Heat pump air conditioning and heating is also more efficient — more on that here.)

Heat pump water heaters as batteries

But not only does this technology use less energy to do more — these types of water heaters can actually serve as energy “batteries” as well. That means they can be programmed to heat water during the middle of the day when there’s an oversupply of solar power and electricity rates are the cheapest.

A 2018 study by the environmental legal group the Natural Resources Defense Council found heat pump water heaters can help shift electricity demand loads.

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Courtesy of Natural Resources Defense Council

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LAist

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Then they can store that heated water until later when you hop in the shower in the evening when electricity rates and demand are highest, and when solar power is waning (because we don’t yet have enough grid-scale battery storage).

Friday Apaliski of the Building Decarb Coalition hugs her heat pump water heater, which looks pretty similar to a gas one.

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Courtesy of Friday Apaliski

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This makes the heat pump water heater one of the most cost-efficient and simplest ways to help address the challenges we have of high electricity demand and higher risk for rolling power outages during increasingly hot summer evenings and nights.

“For the most part, you're using your water heater very consistently throughout the year, as opposed to an air conditioner or a furnace, which has a very seasonal usage,” said Friday Apaliski, a spokesperson for the Building Decarbonization Coalition, a nonprofit that works to get fossil fuels out of buildings and is a partner with the state in getting the word out about these financial incentives via switchison.org. “And so when we think about really getting efficient in our homes and our energy systems and doing right by the climate, the water heater is a really key piece of that.”

Money available to install more heat pump water heaters

Programming a heat pump water heater to use the most electricity during the times of day when power demand is lower and cheaper is a requirement of a state-funded program, called TECH Clean California, that provides some of the largest available financial incentives for swapping out that gas water heater for an electric heat pump.

The vast majority of available funding is currently for low-income households and renters. Whether you qualify depends on where you live — for example, a family of four in L.A. County qualifies if they make $100,900 a year or less.

The program was so popular it quickly ran out of funding in its first year and is once again almost out of funding for households that don’t qualify as low-income. But there’s still a lot of money available for low-income households — at least 40% of the funding is required to benefit low-income communities that have outsized pollution burdens.

And these aren’t rebates — the incentive is completed through the contractor, who has to be certified by TECH. That allows the customer to receive the financial benefit immediately, and the onus is on the contractor to complete the necessary paperwork.

For those households, the funding covers up to $4,185 for the new heat pump water heater and another $4,000 for any electrical upgrades in the house that may need to happen to support the new water heater.

A contractor’s perspective

One of the biggest barriers to more low-income households participating in these programs is that people simply don’t know they exist, said Josué Zepeda, a program manager with Paramount-based HVAC company Reliable Energy. The company primarily does installations for low-income houses and apartments across L.A. and Orange counties via TECH and Southern California Edison incentive programs.

“[Many of our customers] have yet to understand words such as heat pump or electrification,” said Zepeda. “They do hear on the news when it comes to vehicles. They do hear on the news when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and helping the climate crisis in regards to California and overall the world. But when it comes to a personalized view to their homes, they're like, ‘Well, as far as I know, I have been told to set my thermostat at certain temperatures, or I've been told to do certain changes in my lifestyle, but I have yet to hear of changing my water heater out.'”

Heat pump water heaters and other more efficient electric appliances and air conditioning systems can also save you money, but it may not always be the case in reality, said Ron Garcia, who owns the company.

A heat pump water heater installed by Reliable Energy.

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Courtesy of Reliable Energy

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“We've had customers say ‘Well, before I used to go to a cool center throughout the day and stay there and now I stay in my home because it's more comfortable,’ so therefore they feel that 'Oh, I'm saving money, I can run it longer,’” Garcia said. “Well, when you’re running it longer, you're going to end up having to pay more in your bill. The costs on an annual basis to run a gas water heater versus a heat pump water heater are almost identical, but let’s see it in reality.”

He said there’s also the simple fact that electricity rates are going up, which the state is currently grappling to address.

Garcia emphasized these nuances are why a more holistic approach to education about electrification is needed: it’s not just about swapping out one appliance for another to save money — it’s about how energy is used and wasted in your specific home. But starting with an appliance often leads to the question — what’s next? For example, Garcia said, everything from weatherizing the home so it’s not wasting energy on leakage to getting solar panels and battery storage, where major bill savings can occur.

“It’s a step. Now we're telling them, go get solar because now you really need it,” Garcia said. “Now you'll truly get savings.”

Contractors themselves also need more education, said Zepeda. Often, contractors don’t know of the options or aren’t trained to install such appliances.

“My job as a contractor is I need to go and fix the situation,” Zepeda said. “Instead of saying, with what is coming with California's policies, well, maybe a heat pump water heater or a heat pump furnace would make sense for this home. So, it all circles back, whether it's for the public, whether it's for contractors, it's a big educational push.”

Resources

A long-awaited vision for Huntington Drive is finally coming into focus. In the future, the busy corridor will have dedicated bus lanes, protected bike lanes, two lanes of vehicle traffic in each direction, a thin median and wide sidewalks.

This was the plan chosen by the City for the Huntington Drive Multi-Modal Transportation Improvement Project, which runs on an approximately four-mile stretch of the street between North Mission Road near LAC+USC Medical Center and Alhambra/South Pasadena. This had much more public support than the competing alternative, which featured a wide median rather than wide sidewalks, according to Mary Nemick, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Engineering.

Nemick said the next step is to hire a consultant to create design and engineering documents. This phase is expected to take about two years before groundbreaking can occur.

Currently, Huntington Drive has three vehicular lanes in each direction, the bike lanes are unprotected, and about 25% of the corridor lacks sidewalks. Though pedestrians and bicyclists account for only 1% of peak-hour trips, they account for 54% of severe or fatal injuries from traffic collisions, according to a project document.

The design budget is about $10.5 million, Nemick said, and the overall project cost will be determined after designs are completed.

The project is being funded by some of the money previously allocated for the construction of the 710 Freeway extension, which was abandoned in 2018 after decades of local opposition.

The Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a roughly 40,000-square-foot expansion that will include indoor and outdoor science learning areas and space for special exhibits.

The centerpiece of the buildout will include an interactive display of the Inspiration space shuttle mockup, where visitors can go inside the cargo bay.

Built in 1972, the 35-foot-tall model made of wood, plastic and aluminum functioned as a prototype and fitting tool for all of the orbiters that launched into space.

“We’re super excited to be able to put it on display for the public, really for the first time in forever,” Ben Dickow, president and executive director of the Columbia Memorial Space Center, told LAist.

The expansion will also allow for educational areas, where students can learn about the pioneering engineering and design work that went into building the model at Rockwell International in Downey.

The backstory

Last fall, after sitting in storage for more than a decade, the full-scale model was moved a few blocks to a temporary home.

The Inspiration space shuttle mockup was moved in sections to a temporary home last fall

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Courtesy Columbia Memorial Space Center

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The Space Center said renovation work on the mock up will take months and include rehabs of its 60-foot cargo bay and flight deck.

Dickow said Downey is where all of the Apollo capsules that went to the moon and all of the space shuttles were designed and built.

“This is part of the L.A. story as much as entertainment or anything like that,” Dickow said, adding that it’s a legacy he feels like Angelenos sometimes forget. “The space craft that took humanity to the moon, the space craft that brought humanity into lower earth orbit and built the international space station, these are human firsts... and they all happened right here.”

What’s next? 

The Space Center is looking to raise $50 million that would go toward building plans, special exhibits and more.

Dickow said the new building that will house the space shuttle mockup should be open to the public in about two years.

By early next year, he said the plan is to have the shuttle model available for bi-monthly public visits as it undergoes renovation.

Pacific Palisades homeowners looking to sell high-end properties after the January fires could escape the city’s “mansion tax” under a proposal advanced Monday by a key committee of the Los Angeles City Council.

Measure ULA is a voter-approved tax on real estate selling for $5.3 million or more. The city uses the revenue for rent relief, eviction defense and affordable housing construction efforts.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, said she has heard from hundreds of homeowners who say the tax is affecting their post-fire recovery plans.

“For some, recovery is going to mean leaving the Palisades,” Park said during Monday’s meeting of the Ad-Hoc Committee for L.A. Recovery. “In those instances — where a sale is by no means voluntary — I don't think we should impede that objective.”

Vote follows direction from mayor

Measure ULA levies a 4% tax on properties selling for more than $5.3 million, and a 5.5% tax on properties selling for more than $10.6 million.

Last month, Mayor Karen Bass sent a letter asking the City Council to pass an ordinance giving the city’s director of finance the power to exempt Palisades homeowners from Measure ULA within three years of the fire.

In her letter, Bass wrote: “After adoption of the ordinance, I will issue an executive directive instructing the Director of Finance to promulgate a temporary exemption that provides much needed relief for those Palisades residents who owned and occupied residential property in the Palisades at the time of the fire, avoids unintended loopholes, and furthers the purpose of ULA.”

Bass’ office said the letter was sent following a meeting she had with Rick Caruso, the billionaire real estate developer, former mayoral candidate and founder of Steadfast L.A., an organization focused on fire recovery.

How we got here

Any final tax exemption would still need further action from the City Council and Mayor’s Office to take effect.

The proposal cleared Monday’s committee in a 3-0 vote. But it needs further consideration by the full City Council before any ordinance is passed. Bass would then need to issue an executive directive with full details of the post-fire tax exemption.

This isn’t the first effort to cancel the “mansion tax” for Pacific Palisades homeowners. A state bill introduced days before the end of Sacramento’s legislative session would have carved out sales in the fire zone.

But the exemption would have only gone through if efforts to repeal the tax either failed to qualify for the ballot or were dropped by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, an anti-mansion tax group. The bill also would have sought to address concerns about depressed housing development in the city by lowering the tax on sales of recently constructed apartments.

Bass said she asked Sacramento lawmakers to shelve the bill so more amendments could be made in the upcoming legislative session.