Frank Richter is like the Sherlock Holmes of energy efficiency.
Clients come to him with their problems: a high electric bill, cold floors, a broken water heater. Then, he walks around their homes looking for clues that may not be apparent to the naked eye, like an incandescent lightbulb or a gap in the insulation. To crack a case, he has to figure out where energy is escaping.
“You try to make recommendations based on what they want to do,” Richter said. “And we might discover things that they didn't know they could do, which is the fun part.”
Richter volunteers as a coach with the Monadnock Sustainability Hub, helping people figure out how to save money and cut fossil fuel emissions with home upgrades.
With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest federal climate policy in American history, suddenly there was a lot more money behind those recommendations. Households could use thousands of dollars in expanded tax credits to pay for things like solar panels and heat pumps.
Those tax credits were supposed to last for seven more years. Now, they’re going away at the end of this month, as a result of provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law over the summer.
In response, the Monadnock Sustainability Hub hatched a new plan. If the group was going to meet its goal — to transition their 800-square-mile corner of New Hampshire off fossil fuels — it needed to raise money to help people get electric appliances and switch to renewable energy. The hub started a program called Electrify Monadnock.
“We want to keep the momentum going. People have this bottled up interest in doing all this stuff. They just need to fund it and finance it,” Richter said.
Rachel Ranelli, the hub’s sole employee and a recent college graduate, is the main person responsible for creating this DIY local version of federal climate policy. Since incentives were rolled back, she says there has been less interest in the coaching program.
“We can't rely on the federal government to be making progress towards that goal of reducing our emissions, so we really look at, how can we make change on a local level,” she said.
Scaling down to meet climate goals
The hub has raised more than $350,000 dollars from private donors to create a program that could replace the federal tax credits people had been expecting.
Ranelli has been working on a structure for the program, including how to divvy up the funds, how to process applications, and how to funnel the benefits towards low-income residents. Households will be able to get up to $7,000 in rebates for all kinds of home projects, such as installing solar panels or switching to heat pumps.
Raising money from local donors to address climate change house-by-house might seem like the opposite of efficiency. But Ranelli says even though the hub cannot offer as much money as the federal government did, she’s hoping the fund will make a difference.
“That's, you know, 40 or 50 more houses who are not burning fossil fuels,” she said.
Dori Drachman, the chair of the hub’s board, says one reason she thinks a fund like this will work is because she saw how federal incentives encouraged people to make climate-friendly home upgrades.
The efforts of small communities add up, Drachman says, and can serve as models for other parts of the country.
“We don't have time to wait. We really don't. We have to do something now, which is why we're doing this fund,” she said. “The climate is changing.”
About 30% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions come from heating, cooling, cooking, and keeping the lights on in homes and businesses. Another roughly 30% comes from transportation, including gas-powered cars.
There are some other incentives for homeowners to cut their emissions that aren’t disappearing, like the federally funded rebate programs New Hampshire state officials are still working to stand up. New Hampshire Saves, a program run by the state’s utility companies, also offers incentives for energy-saving upgrades.
But the Trump administration is turning support away from renewable energy and other programs aimed at cutting emissions, in favor of supporting fossil fuel resources like gas, coal, and oil.
“Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts to unreliable energy sources is vital to energy dominance, national security, economic growth, and the fiscal health of the Nation,” the administration said in a July executive order.
Research shows transitioning to energy efficient electric systems can both cut costs for households and reduce the emissions driving human-caused climate change. According to the International Monetary Fund, subsidies for fossil fuels can have harmful effects on economic growth by inefficiently allocating resources and encouraging pollution.
'A toasty treat'
For Janet Altobello, a client of the hub’s coaching program, having financial and logistical assistance helped her kick-start a transition off fossil fuels she’d been thinking about for a long time.
“We were really excited about the Inflation Reduction Act, of course, and then kind of had to rush to take advantage of the incentives there,” she said. “We have really modest incomes, and we just really have to look at the cash incentives for all these different programs and kind of pace it out gradually.”
Altobello has been working to keep the heat in since the 1970s, when insulation meant wrapping the foundation of a house in black tar paper and piling evergreens on top to keep the wind out. Now, her home exemplifies the many electrification upgrades a house can get.
She added insulation, upgraded the electric panel, and replaced her gas stove with an induction range, which only works with magnetic pots and pans.
“I had this name tag with a magnet on it. And so, I would go to rummage sales and just test pots to see if they were magnetic on the bottom. So, I got some great pots for like $2 each,” she said.
She bought a plug-in hybrid car, and Frank Richter helped her figure out how to charge it — even taking her on a field trip to a public charging station. And she installed heat pumps.
“That is a toasty treat. It's like about a seven minute experience of warming it up and then feeling like, ‘Oh, this is really a luxury,’” she said.
Now, she’s become the go-to person for many of her neighbors who are looking to make changes to their own homes.
Altobello says the whole process of slowly transitioning her home has been relatively painless, but it has been a stretch. She took out a six-year, zero percent interest loan from New Hampshire Saves for part of the work.
“I just feel lucky to be able to do it. I feel like, wow, I have help. I can do this,” she said.
And she’s not finished. Now that the Electrify Monadnock program is getting started, Altobello is thinking about better EV chargers so she can get an all-electric car. Or, maybe, solar panels.
