3-decker: New kind of power house
Switch off fossil fuels becomes focus of study
WORCESTER — There are roughly 5,000 three-deckers in Worcester and the one at 23 Hollis St. generally looks like the rest. It’s a big, boxy building, with tenants on each floor going about their lives.
Nothing special here, right? Well, looks can be deceiving. This building in Main South represents an experiment that could transform the lives of tens of thousands of Worcester residents who live in three-deckers. Work is expected to start this fall or early January to swap out or complement the property’s fossil fuel heating and cooling system with one that runs on electricity.
If successful, it could serve as a model for owners of three-deckers citywide to electrify their properties, get off fossil fuels, cut greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
‘Pretty astounding’: Concerns about high costs
But there’s a caveat, and it comes down to money.
“I’m skeptical myself that older three-deckers can rely on electrification,” said Steve Teasdale, longtime executive director at the Main South Community Development Corp., the nonprofit that owns 23 Hollis St. “The costs we’re looking at for electrification of these (three-decker) buildings is going be pretty astounding.”
The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and RMI, formerly the Rocky Mountain Institute, contributed a total of $40,000 to study six three-deckers owned by the Main South CDC for potential conversion to full electrification. Several Worcester organizations pushed for the study and asked the development corporation if it would have some of its three-deckers participate.
Research narrowed the focus on 23 Hollis St., and a $100,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center will fund the conversion to electrification, said Teasdale. Consultants are in the process of recommending how to best implement conversion, and Teasdale said more than $100,000 may be needed to do the job.
More than just a heat pump
It’s not just about putting an energyefficient heat pump in the building, said Teasdale. Before that happens, there needs to be beefed-up insulation to seal up the building so that air doesn’t haphazardly flow in and out. Plus, new windows are needed to cut down on drafts, and there’s also the matter of exploring the possibility of rooftop solar.
Ensuring proper air distribution in three-deckers is a major challenge for a heat pump, said Teasdale, because the building’s design includes numerous rooms and corridors.
Don’t think that Teasdale isn’t supportive of the project. He said he fully backs the environmental benefits, but high upfront costs likely mean owners will pass those expenses on to tenants in the form of higher rents. Not a pleasant picture, he said, as many Worcester families already struggle to pay skyrocketing rents.
Power grid: Is there enough juice?
There’s another challenge: Worcester’s power grid. It’s antiquated, and some worry that it may not be able to handle the increased demand for electricity as more buildings — including three-deckers — move off fossil fuels to electricity.
A “big concern” is how John Odell, the city’s chief sustainability officer, described the current state of the power grid during a City Council meeting Tuesday.
“The big concern a lot of folks have, rightly so, is how we’re going to adapt all of our existing building stock, such that there’s enough capacity to handle that on the electric side, as the building stock slowly gets converted from fossil fuel to electric, and the electric being powered by renewable energy,” he said.
The city, which is not part of this three-decker pilot project, responded to a request to interview Odell for this story with a prepared statement: “The City is happy to see a community partner participating in the effort to electrify housing.”
National Grid is Worcester’s electricity supplier. Earlier this month the public utility released a plan to invest $2 billion in Massachusetts in the next five years and beyond to modernize the grid to meet the state’s mandated goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
One linchpin of National Grid’s plan is infrastructure improvements, including new and upgraded power lines, transformers and substations to meet substantial growth in electric demand.
The improvements are projected to result in a 2% average annual increase in a customer’s bill. Plus, generate an additional 4 gigawatts of capacity by 2035, enough to support more than 1 million electric vehicles and 750,000 electric heat pumps.
National Grid is soliciting public comments, and the company said it will take them into account when it makes a formal filing of the plan with the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities in January. It’s up to that state agency to approve the plan.
Conversion: ‘Brilliant idea’
Financial incentives are needed to help property owners convert to electricity, said Jason Pincomb, a Worcester realtor who serves on the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund. He mentioned Mass Save rebates and state and federal funds as sources of dollars that could help owners offset the costs of conversion.
As Pincomb sees it, converting to electrification improves a building’s energy efficiency and is good for tenants in terms of lower electricity bills and environmental improvements.
“Conversion to electric is a brilliant idea,” said Pincomb, who stressed that his opinions don’t reflect the city’s trust fund and his employer.
Mike DeLuca has a completely different view.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” said DeLuca, a Worcester realtor who owns 12 threedeckers in the city. “(Conversion to electric) is not cost efficient.”
DeLuca said he completely renovated three of his buildings — a total of nine rental units — by investing in new insulation, windows and doors. He also went with hot-water baseboard heat that runs on gas. To prove his point that energy-efficient fossil fuels systems are the preferred way to go, DeLuca said his tenants’ energy bills dropped to around $100 monthly, in some cases less.
“Nine units I renovated. They’re super efficient, they work fine, and they’re on fossil fuels that are ready for prime time. The electric stuff is not ready for prime time. They’re too expensive,” said DeLuca.
He made another distinction, pointing out that a nonprofit getting “taxpayer dollars” to renovate one three-decker in Main South is a “totally different deal” than private owners that don’t have access to similar financial backing from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. The state economic development agency receives funds from the Renewable
Energy Trust Fund, established in 1998 by the state legislature as part of the restructuring of the electric utility market.
Money flows into the fund from a charge of $0.0005 per kilowatt hour paid by customers of investor-owned utilities in Massachusetts. The funds also come from municipal electric departments that participate in the program. The average household pays 29 cents monthly to the trust fund.
Fear is shared
Teasdale’s fear that higher rents could result from full electricity is shared by Jeuji Diamondstone, chairwoman of the environmental and climate justice committee in Worcester’s chapter of the NAACP.
The local chapter is one of the groups that helped initiate the three-decker study, and Diamondstone believes government policies are needed to ensure that three-decker units remain affordable.
“This cause demonstrates a pathway to improving health and safety of tripledeckers and moving off fossil fuels,” said Diamondstone. “The caveat is (23 Hollis St.) is owned by a community development corporation that is committed to preserving affordable housing. Many triple-deckers are owned privately, and that is unregulated housing. There are policy challenges ahead.”
Teasdale sees opportunities and challenges at 23 Hollis St. Opportunities to end a building’s reliance on fossil fuels, improve the environment and provide a comfortable, energy-efficient building for tenants.
The challenge comes from significant upfront costs and determining the best equipment to get the job done. At 23 Hollis St., that could mean full electrification, or holding onto the property’s existing fossil fuel system for use on extremely cold days. At this time, no decisions have been made.
“I think it’s a good study. But I don’t think, at this point, there are any solutions. It’s a pilot program for a reason,” said Teasdale.
Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on X: @henrytelegram.