Warmer Is Cooler: Building a heat pump community in Juneau.

• Author: Rettig, Molly
• Position: ENERGY

Cathy Muse doesn't like using Craiglist that much, but there was something she really wanted to get rid of: her oil tank and all the oil inside it. So she went online and posted it.

It's half price if you can pump it!

Thanks to her new air source heat pump, she didn't need it anymore. Ditching her oil tank and Toyo stove was a long-awaited milestone for Muse, a Juneau resident who raised four kids in Alaska's capital city and now has grandchildren there.

"It's so nice to be off oil." she says.

Muse and her husband are one of nearly eighty households who are installing air source heat pumps this fall and winter as part of "Thermalize Juneau," a local program based on the popular Solarize campaigns that have popped up around Alaska and the Lower 48. It works by organizing local homeowners who are interested in clean energy and leveraging their buying power to obtain discounts. In addition to discounts, the program offers technical assistance to demystify the process of installing a new and unfamiliar technology, which, for people like Muse, was even more valuable.

"A heat pump is something I looked into three or four years ago, but I just didn't know how to do it, or even what it was exactly," she says.

Air source heat pumps absorb heat from the outside air and use a small amount of electricity to move that heat inside a building. They have tons of potential in a place like Southeast Alaska, which has a mild climate and affordable electricity, and have become very popular over the past decade. But, for the majority of interested homeowners, changing from a tried-and-true technology like oil was daunting.

That's why Thermalize Juneau started in 2020. The program streamlines the entire process for consumers, from providing free home energy assessments to coordinating electricians and HVAC contractors needed to add a heat pump to a home's heating mix.

"The goal was to build a bridge between the consumer seeking access to local renewable energy and contractors who could bring that into the home," says Andy Romanoff, executive director of Alaska Heat Smart, the local nonprofit that leads the Thermalize program.

The result? More than 160 home assessments, up to eighty new heat pump installations, and two dozen home energy efficiency retrofits to make that heat go even further. The innovative approach shows what can be accomplished when a community works together toward a common goal--because Thermalize isn't just about helping homeowners save...