Our Resources
BPRC develops and organizes resources to support effective implementation
March 2026
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Building Power Resource Center, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE)
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Programs for comprehensive residential building upgrades can maximize benefits for residents, owners, utility systems, and the economy when investments are concentrated in a particular geographic area to lower costs and avoid the need for additional utility infrastructure.
This paper describes the policies and funding sources, as of January 2026, creating opportunities for comprehensive geographically focused and publicly managed residential retrofit programs to lower retrofit, energy, and housing costs in a dozen states: Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Building upgrade measures studied include:
Health and safety repairs
Weatherization
Electrification
Solar and Storage
Thermal energy networks
Virtual power plants (VPP)
February 2026
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Read Report
As federal support for clean energy and building modernization has retreated, states are playing a growing role in helping public schools upgrade aging infrastructure and improve indoor air quality. In the absence of sustained federal leadership, state governments are deploying grants, financing programs, tax credits, and technical assistance to support school decarbonization.
This report examines how those state investments are structured and whether they are actually delivering fiscal benefits for school districts.
Drawing on more than 100 projects nationwide and detailed case studies from six school districts in six states, the analysis moves beyond projected savings to assess real, post-implementation results. Using first-time reporting of data, the paper shows that investments in energy efficiency, electrification, geothermal, and solar are not just reducing emissions—they are delivering real, recurring operating savings for districts.
At a moment when federal clean energy investments are being scaled back, states are stepping up, and the evidence shows these investments can strengthen both school infrastructure and local balance sheets.
January 2026
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Building Power Resource Center, Elevate, Greenlink Analytics
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This report provides an economic evaluation for two approaches for aggregated residential electrification.
The first case study analyzes the costs and benefits for neighborhood-scale electrification in Richmond, California. Findings include:
Neighborhood-scale electrification could save PG&E approximately $32,000 per customer in avoided gas pipeline replacement and maintenance costs1 and increase MCE electrical revenues by up to $2,064 per household per year.
If electrification is paired with solar + battery storage, residents could save around $2,800 on utility costs per year.
Widespread electrification would improve Richmond public health outcomes, removing 0.5 tons of NOX, 4.22 tons of CO2e emissions, and saving $367 in avoided medical costs per household per year.
Electrification would have positive labor market impacts, creating one job for every five households electrified.
The second case study analyzes the costs and benefits for the DC Healthy Homes and Residential Electrification Act of 2024 (HHA 2024). Findings include:
DC residents are projected to save $101.6 million on gas bills, earn $245 million from Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs), and gain $21.3 million from selling some distributed solar power back to the grid.
The District is expected to benefit from $268 million in employment growth and GDP expansion. Altogether, total benefits are expected to be $635.9 million.
The District will spend $211.8 million in capital costs for initial installations, residents are projected to face a relatively modest increase of $25.4 million in electricity bills to operate electric heat pumps, resulting in a total estimated cost of $237.2 million.
The resulting benefit-cost ratios are 14.5 for residents, 1.3 for the District, and 2.7 overall, indicating a strong economic case for the policy.
January 2026
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Building Power Resource Center, Climate and Community Institute
The dominant approach to decarbonizing homes today is for individual building owners to switch to electric appliances and, in some cases, install solar. This ad-hoc strategy has led to wealthier homeowners electrifying their homes and pulling themselves off an aging gas grid, leaving low-income families and renters behind with polluting appliances and high gas bills.
Neighborhood-scale building decarbonization presents an exciting alternative: shifting the unit of building decarbonization from the building to the block, from the individual to the community.
The concept of neighborhood-scale building decarbonization is new in the United States. Its scale also requires stronger coordination from advocates, with major potential positive outcomes in terms of efficiency and equity. This toolkit outlines how to kick-start a project and provides support on making key decisions.
December 2025
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Read Report
Salt Lake City School District (SLCSD) has been pioneering one of the first district-wide clean energy transitions in the country, and its experience offers a roadmap for other districts in Utah and across the country working to build resilient, cost-saving, healthier schools. Saving Millions and Cutting Emissions: Four Lessons From Salt Lake City School District’s Energy Transition shows how internal implementation processes and external forces of student and community organizing created the conditions to make this work possible. The report goes past early wins to lay out what it takes to sustain long-term progress—and how public schools can lead on air quality, taxpayer savings, and emissions cuts.
November 2025
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100%, Building Power Resource Center
Slides from Dec 3, 2025 webinar
Minnesota communities are facing increasingly severe climate impacts from flooding to wildfire smoke to extreme weather events. In response, local governments are making a plan, and rapidly expanding the number of climate projects and programs to address these impacts.
This report, Local Government Climate Action Plans in Minnesota, details the impressive progress of Climate Action Plans (CAPs) in Minnesota.
This report is a valuable tool for local leaders and advocates in MN and elsewhere. Key features of the report include:
A comparative framework and analysis of climate action plans in MN
Successful examples of community climate action and replicable projects
State opportunities to support local governments’ efforts for CAP development and implementation
October 2025
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Building Power Resource Center, Labor Network for Sustainability
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Watch the Nov 19 Bargaining for Green Schools, Good Jobs, and Bright Futures Webinar
With scorching heat impacting student learning across the country, a new report shares how union educators can, and do, play an important role in upgrading school buildings with climate resilience and energy efficiency measures. The report shares case studies and recommendations for union educators to enhance school infrastructure with measures that improve student well-being and learning, save districts money, and create good-paying jobs.
Citing examples from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, the report details how educator unions have already used the collective bargaining process to fight for healthier schools that meet critical student, worker, and community needs. It also provides unions nationwide with best practices, recommendations, and action steps that they can implement to win commitments that ensure school buildings can withstand the dangerous impacts of the climate crisis.
July 2025
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Read Piece
Public housing—home to 1.7 million people in the United States—is one of the last remaining truly affordable options for low-income households, and decades of federal disinvestment and neglect make the repair and retrofit needs of this housing stock especially urgent. The public housing system, which includes 900,000 homes across the country, has the market power to create the demand for technologies that are far cheaper and easier to install.
By leveraging the purchasing power of the public housing system, we can support the development of inexpensive clean energy technologies while directly improving the lives of public housing authority (PHA) residents. These new technologies can then be used by millions of homes throughout the United States. In order to achieve this, state and local governments must scale up collaboration with their public housing authorities to support programs and purchasing, build in-house capacity, and stabilize its governing power.
March 2025
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Need to wrap your head around how to pay for school decarbonization projects?
This Financing and Funding Cheat Sheet outlines the main approaches, and can serve as a guide as you explore options in your region.
December 2024
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Building Power Resource Center, Climate & Community Institute, Center for Public Enterprise
Watch the Dec 10, 2024 Webinar
This memo reviews three ownership models available to school districts across the country: private ownership managed through power purchase agreements with third-party developers, direct school ownership, and green bank or state finance authority ownership. Every district has different conditions to consider, and this memo provides a preliminary guide and recommendations on the three most-used options for financing solar on schools. This memo recommends that, thanks to new investments and funding mechanisms from the Inflation Reduction Act, school districts should look beyond the status quo of power purchase agreements in which they continue to pay a third party private energy provider for their electricity, and instead embrace the benefits and incentives of the Inflation Reduction Act to either directly own their school solar system or collaborate with state finance institutions to scale public financing and public ownership of school solar systems across the district.