Pennsylvania Legacies #181: Homework

Starting this month, Pennsylvania counties can apply for more than $120 million in new funding from the state’s Whole Home Repairs Program. In addition to fixing up older properties, grants to income-eligible homeowners may unlock other opportunities for funding energy-efficiency upgrades, cutting into a major source of carbon emissions in the Commonwealth. Jeaneen Zappa of the Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance and Elizabeth Marx of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project explain why the program impacts more than just housing.

Starting this month, Pennsylvania counties can apply for more than $120 million in new funding from the state’s Whole Home Repairs Program. Income-eligible homeowners will be able to seek up to $50,000 in grants to fix up ailing properties, while owners of affordably-priced rental units can apply for subsidized loans.

The allocation approved last summer is notable for a couple of reasons. One is the unusually strong bipartisan support the bill received as it sailed through the General Assembly in just a few months — an increasingly rare feat in Harrisburg. Another is the way it addresses a whole range of overlapping concerns, from housing and urban redevelopment to public health and environmental justice. 

“The program is the result of a need to really fill areas that we are not addressing in the current weatherization programs… many, many homes every year have been deferred from those programs because of issues related to moisture, mold, pests, roof leaks, foundation drainage, which are moisture things that keep those homes from really being positioned to be weatherized,” said Jeaneen Zappa, Executive Director of the Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance.

“You cannot seal up a house with mold in it, right? You can’t go in and seal all the cracks because if there’s mold in that home, then that household will have those compounding health effects as a result. So this program will come in and it’ll fix those, those kinds of home repair issues that the energy efficiency programming can’t,” Elizabeth Marx, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project said. 

The program will also help address the energy burden, the percent of income spent on energy bills, of living in a poorly-maintained home. 

“When a house is weatherized, they can save upwards of almost $300 a year. Or more in a year like this when we’re facing some of the highest energy costs in decades for home heating,” said Marx. 

It will also unlock other potential funding opportunities for owners of older homes to improve energy efficiency — upgrades that will cut into a major source of carbon emissions in Pennsylvania.

“Energy affordability, energy justice was very much squarely in the environmental justice kind of field… There’s a lot of talk about electrification and what that can do as far as helping homes, but right now in Pennsylvania you cannot just electrify homes, right? We need to fix the building measures and fix the building envelopes and make them able to do things like rooftop solar, transition to renewables,” said Zappa. 

“So there are grid benefits to this project, this program, that we will see. And now there’s lot going into infrastructure. And if we can use that money to make our grid more resilient, rather than building it out to handle more load because we’re actually working to reduce the load, you have other benefits that are really going to come out of this program,” she added.

 

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Josh Raulerson (00:02):

It's Friday, December 2nd, 2022. And from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, this is Pennsylvania Legacies. I'm Josh Raulerson. Starting this month, Pennsylvania counties can apply for more than 120 million in new funding from the state's whole home repairs program income eligible homeowners will be able to seek up to $50,000 in grants to fix up ailing properties while owners of affordably priced rental units can also apply for subsidized loans.

The allocation approved last summer is notable for a couple of reasons. One is the unusually strong bipartisan support the bill received as its sailed through the General Assembly in just a few months, and increasingly rare feat in Harrisburg. Another is the way it addresses a whole range of overlapping concerns from housing and urban redevelopment, to public health and environmental justice. It'll also unlock other potential funding opportunities for owners of older homes to improve energy efficiency -- upgrades that will cut into a major source of carbon emissions in Pennsylvania.

Jeaneen Zappa with the Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance and Elizabeth Marx of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project are part of a coalition of groups that back the measure. They're both here on the podcast to explain why it's an important step, not just for low-income Pennsylvanians, but also for the climate. Jeaneen, Liz, welcome.

Jeaneen Zappa (01:22):

Glad to be here.

Elizabeth Marx (01:23):

Thanks for having us on.

Josh Raulerson (01:24):

So we're talking about this new whole home repair legislation. This is a pretty big piece of legislation, so it is maybe hard to know where to start. But you know, our focus here at at PEC and a lot of the organizations we work with is, is going to be on energy and water efficiency, but of course this goes well beyond that. So to begin with, can you just give me kind of an overview of the legislation, why it was needed, what it does, and what are the primary programs that benefit?

Jeaneen Zappa (01:52):

You know, Josh, the program is the result of a need to really fill areas that we are not addressing in the current weatherization programs. Whether those are run by utility or under the umbrella of the broader weatherization assistance program. And many, many homes every year have been deferred from those programs because of issues related to moisture, mold, pests, roof leaks, foundation drainage, which are moisture things that keep those homes from really being positioned to be weatherized. And so this is a great program designed to address that. It specifically allows a forgivable loan of up to $50,000 per home. This program was put in place as an appropriation, a budget appropriation rather than a piece of legislation, technically speaking. So there's $125 million that has been allocated until it would run out. I think everybody's hope is that we will see this be hugely successful because it is deeply needed, and then we will have a broader, more permanent program afterward. Liz, do you want to add onto that? That's a really high level starting point.

Elizabeth Marx (03:04):

Yeah. Low income households have very high -- disproportionately high -- energy burdens, right? They pay more compared to higher income, middle income households. A middle-income household may have an energy burden and the average is about three or four percent of income. The average energy burden for a low-income household is anywhere between six and 30 percent. That is a large portion, and I should back up and say, an energy burden is the percent of your income that you pay towards your energy costs, right. Electricity and heat. Those are your major home energy costs. And so, when you're paying 30% or more of your income on energy, you have very, very little left over especially given the high rent burdens that folks are facing, the high food costs that folks are facing. And so, you know, this program is going to get at that disparity by eliminating some of the challenges with low-income housing, which is that, it's just they're less insulated, they're older, they tend to have less new appliances that might use less energy

Elizabeth Marx (04:21):

That's why there's a disparity and energy burden, right? It's not because people are cranking their heat and turning their windows out. That's not what's happening. We've got low-income homes that are just not well insulated, weatherized, in order to save those energy costs. And so it's one of those compounding things. It's a snowball rolling down the hill, right? And what this does, it'll take some of the homes that are in worst repair across the state, and take them off that deferral list as Jeaneen says, we have a ton of households that cannot be weatherized. They can't receive energy efficiency. Because you cannot seal up a house with mold in it, right? You can't go in and seal all the cracks because if, if there's mold in that home, then that household will have those compounding health effects as a result. So this program will come in and it'll fix those, those kinds of home repair issues that the energy efficiency programming can't.

Elizabeth Marx (05:27):

And hopefully we'll help buy down energy burden. You know, when a house is weatherized, they can save upwards of almost $300 a year, or more in a year like this when we're facing some of the highest energy costs in decades for home heating. And so, you know, we're, we're really encouraged that this program is rolling out when it is you know. Just a number for you -- I think we have something like 10,000 homes in Pennsylvania that have been deferred for weatherization, and that's just through the weatherization assistance program. There are thousands more that are deferred for comprehensive energy efficiency programming through the utility sponsored programs, the low income usage reduction programs. So we've got really across the state, probably tens of thousands of households that can't be weatherized, they can't get comprehensive energy efficiency because of the condition of their home. So this is the crack at that and, you know, it's serving as a national model.

Jeaneen Zappa (06:29):

Yeah, I would just add to that, Josh, and say, right, that anecdotally it's something in the neighborhood of 30% of homes that should be able to receive these services that exist, cannot go through the programs because of these other problematic conditions. And it, it's really important to note that there's very stringent and appropriately stringent rules about how you can spend weatherization dollars and or how you can spend dollars in a utility program to which most of us have contributed, right? What they're referred to as rate payer dollars, right? So usually you can only use them to reduce energy and that's why these, these barriers to completing these homes exist because everybody's trying to follow the rules, but that results in the homes that are in the worst shape simply being stuck and kind of cut out on the playground and told, you don't get to play the game. Right? And that's not what we want. So this is an opportunity to bring everybody along and redress a longstanding problem. And Liz is right. It's, it's a great national model too. There's interest across the country in this legislation, in this program.

Josh Raulerson (07:39):

Well, it's interesting that the value of this program would seem to go beyond the immediate assistance to homeowners and residents. And that it just sort of brings everything up to a level where more things are possible. I wonder if the same can be said for, you know, when we think about building, you know, a comprehensive clean energy system in Pennsylvania and reducing carbon emissions and improving energy efficiency and everything, does this also kind of set Pennsylvania up for success in other areas? And in particular, when we talk about workforce and business development, you know, the companies that are going to make all of these, you know, improvements, does it also work that way?

Jeaneen Zappa (08:18):

So, Josh, I think that this program sets the stage for a starting point in Pennsylvania. I don't think it is a silver bullet that's going to solve the many issues that we have, but it's a great way to ensure that there is funds deployed to also train people and to specifically bring along communities that have not been included in this clean energy economy and in these jobs, right? So there's a workforce development component to the, to the program, and that's great. I don't think this is everything we need. Here's the one thing I think it does do, right? It's a perfect opportunity to illustrate to decision makers in the state how important it is to include non-energy benefits in the way we measure the success of these programs. We are fixated on not addressing all of these additional health benefits and homes, occupant comfort, occupant safety issues that are part of the benefit that will come out of this kind of program.

Jeaneen Zappa (09:18):

And if we insist upon looking at a, you know, cost test that says how much did it cost to reduce per kilowatt hour? And that alone, we are not taking into account any of those additional benefits, let alone carbon reduction. So I do think it's a starting point for that. I will also tell you that we are very hopeful that at least some of the counties will choose to voluntarily make measurement in homes that has been done in other pilot programs both in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the past, so that you could measure indoor air quality, you could demonstrably and you know, with evidence show, here's the improvement that we are making here is the reduction in mold, here's the reduction in radon, right, which is you know, the number two cause of lung cancer behind smoking. So these are important improvements in homes. And so we're hoping that voluntarily, since it is not part of the guidelines, which were just released yesterday, that any of that kind of thing be required and nor its first stab at something do you want to burden it too much. You want it to get going, get its sea legs, figure out the kinks, and then figure out how you're going to amp it up to the next level. So that's my hope for this program, Josh. I'll stop there. Liz, maybe you want to comment on, you know, what does this set the stage for in PA?

Elizabeth Marx (10:31):

Yeah, I mean, I think it is the beginning, right? Recognizing a need to integrate programs. And so there's two components in this in addition to the grants and loans that'll go out to, you know, grants to homeowners and loans to small landlords through this program to do the kinds of home repair necessary to facilitate the energy efficiency. But what's also in there is the technical assistance component and coordination and training components. And so, you've got the makings of what I think we really need in this state, which is coordination across programs. We need to be able to have a no wrong door where, low- and moderate-income households can walk in and get energy efficiency, you know, fix the home, and put in the energy efficiency. And so I think, you know, I think we're all kind of holding our breath to see how this works.

Elizabeth Marx (11:38):

You know, I will be completely honest, I have some concerns about the county by county mold that this is out as, and I think we do need at the same time as this rolls out, I think there needs to be guidance to the counties follow up on and, and keep moving with this. I think we're right to get this off the ground as soon as possible. We're going to have to keep building the plane as we fly. And some of that is making sure that we put some policies in place that'll compliment this program and make sure that we can pull all those pieces together effectively in every county, right? And so that means some counties are going to need more assistance, other counties are going to be leaders and we need to see how that goes. And we all need to working out our system loops. We have had a, you know, we cannot, we can no longer work energy efficiency and housing. We have to be looking at it holistically as health and housing and energy all together

Josh Raulerson (12:44):

Yeah. Let's, let's stay with that and talk about what this looks like as it rolls out. The law was passed, obviously, but implementation is another thing as you said. What are the, what are the steps going to be? Like? What does this process look like? What are the kind of tricky areas that you kind of were talking about? What do we need to be keeping an eye on and where will be the opportunities for public input?

Jeaneen Zappa (13:04):

I think the opportunity for public input, sadly, for at least this first initial part has already occurred. And department of Community and Economic Development did receive feedback from a number of groups, including Liz's organization and ours and many others in this space. But there was not a public listening session. People took the time to provide comments and input. The next steps, as I understand it, and again, the guidelines were literally released on November 17th, but there are also allocations based on population. So the entities within a county need to apply for, to receive those funds. And there is a deadline in, I want to say January, that if they have not applied for those funds, those funds will roll to back into a pool that can be tapped into by other counties. So basically have to opt in and we anticipate that will largely be groups that are already doing weatherization work in counties.

Jeaneen Zappa (14:10):

And then they would've to stand up a program to coordinate these resources. So those are at a super high level the next steps, I think that illustrates Liz's point that we need that kind of coordination. The challenge of how this is rolling out is that because it is a population based grant or population based formulaic allocation of funds right now those counties who have more capacity are more likely to be able to take advantage of this in the early stages. And we are, we know, we know that high energy burden, it cuts across every single county in this common law. This is not an urban issue or a rural issue. It is a housing issue and we need to address it. So that's a starting point consideration. I think there'll be more public input later. I don't know. Liz, do you want to chime in there?

Elizabeth Marx (15:02):

Yeah, I, mean I think there's going to be, as I said I earlier I think this is a starting point. And the reason I say that is because while 179 million sounds like an awful lot of money, it's a literal drop in the, compared to the home repair that needs to done across the state to facilitate energy efficiency, right? If this program were to do nothing other than address all of those homes that have been deferred in the last two years for energy efficiency programming, the money would be them, right? So, think, you know, I think we're going to see some of the larger counties roll that out. Some of the, you know, smaller counties that have maybe more experience in some of these is kind of coordinated service delivery. And that's, think that's okay. And so I think, you know, the opportunities for the public, re probably, you know, in talking with, figuring out who in your county is going to be applying for these funds, right? It's either going to be the county or somebody the county designated, either a nonprofit or maybe a housing authority, u that county that'll have, you know, control of this and they'll be coming up with a plan and submitting that plan to DCED. And so in the local level, there's probably an opportunity to have some discussions with local leaders about this program and what it might look like in that county to serve that county's needs.

Josh Raulerson (16:31):

I'm wondering if it would be worth taking a little bit of our time to explain the role of the counties since you, you both have been talking about counties a lot. Could you, could you sort of explain how the legislation defines that, that role for counties in Pennsylvania?

Elizabeth Marx (16:45):

Yeah, so a county applicant is the term that was defined in the legislation and in the, in the guidelines, right? So essentially it's either the county itself that's applying, right? So maybe a department within the county puts together the application and they're going to administer it. Or it's whoever that the county leadership. And so it's going to be different county and the first class, it's going to be determined by the mayor or by city council. In the second class, it'll be determined by executive. All other counties, it'll, it'll be determined by the county government. That's just different terms for same thing, it's county leadership. They will determine who's going to kind of administer this program and then the program administer, that's, that's who can apply, right? Who can apply for funds to DCED that applicant can then subcontract out pieces of this, right? And I think, think that's what you're going to see in most counties is that one agency or one department within a county is not going to be fully equipped to do all the parts of this. And so they're going to need other kind of subcontractors to come in to actually do some of the on the ground work.

Josh Raulerson (18:05):

This legislation is notable not just for what it does, but for the, I think, broad bipartisan support that it has received pretty much from the get go. And not only that, but it moved pretty quickly through the legislative process to become law. That's kind of unusual. What, what does that say to you about the need for this kind of work and what's next in terms of, of other issues to be addressed?

Elizabeth Marx (18:27):

I think what we saw in the pandemic and doing low-income energy affordability and utility access work in the pandemic, the pandemic shone a really bright spotlight on what it means to live in an unhealthy, unsafe living environment, right? And not having access to enough energy to heat your home, not having, you know, insulation, having mold problems, being at home, right? We were all ordered for several months to stay at home as much as possible. And I think that really, what we would, what we were out there saying was home is actually not a safe place for a lot of people, right? And so I think there was more attention paid than ever before to some of the disparities, right? Early on in the pandemic, we saw that those who were impacted most and who had the greatest loss of life were low income communities and Black and brown communities. And I think that's an undeniable factor. There's lots and lots of research that's already gone into it. You saw that eviction moratorium and moratoria on termination of utility services actually ended up saving lives, right? Quantifiably saving lives. And so, you know, I think the reason you saw bipartisan support was a ground swell of people saying, we need to make sure that Pennsylvanians have safe homes, healthy homes, and you know, that is this a right of people to be healthy and safe.

Josh Raulerson (20:12):

Does just the overall increasing cost of energy also play a role in making this making more people think about this issue than they might have in the past?

Jeaneen Zappa (20:22):

I think so, but I don't think that was the case of why it passed. Because, you know, this happened in June before, you know, we were all so focused on Ukraine and the impact on fuel prices. And I, I think, Josh, that, yes, of course this year in particular, right, with the global nature of the energy market and the impact that we are seeing, and then of course, you know, the weather, there's, as we speak, there's three feet of lake effect snow falling in Erie, Pennsylvania, right? So we all know that, you know, the cycle has accelerated. So we're going to see more extreme heat, more extreme cold. We have evidence of that over the past decade in the state, right? More extreme flooding. So we know that resilience of homes is critical. So I think there's another thing at play here, right?

Jeaneen Zappa (21:10):

So of course the prices matter and we've seen inflation. So people's purchasing power is down, rates are up. So to Liz's point earlier, the high energy burden delta is much higher. So that if you are, you know, if you were paying 16% of your household income, you might now be paying 20% just to heat and or cool your home, more likely just heat, right? You might have a window unit air conditioner, but you know, your electricity and, and light, you know, so light and heat your home. The other piece though, I want to step back to something you said, right? This got extremely strong bipartisan support. And I think there's another thing at play, which is yeah, it's a housing issue, but I think there are very few districts in the state where a, an elected official of the 256 right in the house does not have a segment of their geographic territory that has blighted housing or low income residents for whom these are true issues.

Jeaneen Zappa (22:12):

So this cuts across the aisle because these are constituent issues that many, many elected officials see. And I think they did have that bright light shine on them, but these have also been percolating for a long time. And so it's a really common sense measure of how do we fix a problem that we've known has been around for a long time. And we also had funding this year, right? We had a huge budget surplus in Pennsylvania, and we had this leftover ARPA funding, which is what this was used, how this got funded. So I think the desire has been here for a while, but we had a perfect, you know, intersection of events that allowed it to occur. And I think there's another thing that really brought people in support behind this, which is blight is a big issue in the state, and people would like to have a way to stem that off before these houses continue to spiral downward and to keep generational homeowners in a home, in particular in communities, you know?

Jeaneen Zappa (23:09):

And so it's great to have redevelopment, but we don't want to gentrify communities to the point where original residents or, you know, somebody's grandparent bequeath the home to them, but because they don't have the monetary income to maintain that home, it's deteriorated. And so now you've got this high energy burden issue and they can't even take advantage of the resources that are there for them through existing programs because of these problems, right? So, you know, it's like they're outside of the safety net that we've created. So this was a really smart measure. It helps to prevent blight and I mean, yeah, that's a whole other conversation. But yeah, so I think those things have helped to get this further ahead. And so I think looking for those unifying measures that are important in every district that matter to elected officials and that are something they hear from their constituents about will be the opportunity that I think you were asking about, like, where do we see a pathway, right?

Josh Raulerson (24:03):

And bringing it back to the environment. I mean, obviously, everything we've been talking about is really important to a wide swath of, of Pennsylvania. Clearly climate arguably is as important or, or more, so this will, I imagine, have a non-trivial impact on Pennsylvania's efforts to be more energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions. Do we have a sense of what that impact will actually be? Or is there, is there modeling or estimates on, you know, how, how this actually pays dividends for the climate?

Elizabeth Marx (24:33):

So I don’t know if it has, I just want to say like from an environmental just perspective, right? And energy affordability, energy justice was very much squarely in the environmental justice kind of field right? And, and what this will do, right? There's a lot of talk about electrification and what that can do as far as helping homes, but right now in Pennsylvania you cannot just electrify homes, right? We need to fix the building measures and fix the building envelopes and make them able to do things like rooftop solar, transition to renewables. We have a hard time even engaging in that conversation and like, how do you get to electrify homes? How you get to deploy renewable energy in low income communities because we're still dealing with, you know, fixing the home entity. And so I think it's like a primer coat you have to put on you know, to fix something, right? I often will say, right, when somebody has a gaping wound, you cannot treat their cancer until you stop the bleeding.

Jeaneen Zappa (25:53):

And Josh, to your point about measurement, I don't think there was any modeling or anything, but I can tell you that energy efficiency, you know, is proven demonstrable, and there is data that you could use to extrapolate, right? So the utility universal services programs have to report out every year, and it's a two year look back, or it's a two year timeframe because it's a year before the weatherization measure was installed in a year after an initial, what was the difference in performance? And they run the gamut, you know, from like 13 to 22%, right? Depending upon whether it's electrical only or if it's a gas utility, because typically you get a better result if you're adjusting home heating, because you will often do those building shell measures in addition, right? So that, that's not even the level of investment we were talking here. I can also tell you that typically for an investment of 10 to 12,000, you can pretty readily get a 20% reduction in energy usage.

Jeaneen Zappa (26:43):

So that's a big deal. If I told you you could use 20% less energy. So that is a direct relationship to state carbon footprint. I don't, I couldn't pull up fast enough the numbers in residential, in the state climate action plan, but you might want to pull that for your listeners. I do know in Pittsburgh's climate action plan, the last time they put together a carbon footprint, that the residential sector was 25% of their carbon footprint. So it's usually not small. If you could reduce that by 20%, that's a, a not insignificant reduction in carbon. So energy efficiency measures and these kind of improvements is a, is a hugely worthwhile investment for the environment and for resilience, right? We talked about these extreme weather events and the disproportionate impact on, you know, low income communities is well known, and we need to be addressing that too. So this really helps to protect people in many, many ways and stabilize housing. So those are the metrics I would think about, even though it wasn't modeled, I feel a hundred percent confident that you're going to see measurable demonstrable reduction through this work.

Elizabeth Marx (27:48):

And I'll just add as you're talking, Jeaneen, and I'm remembering, you know, there have been some, this didn't come out of nowhere, this project, this pilot or not pilots, program. There have been other pilots across the state to pair home repair with the energy efficiency. And in those cases, when you're repairing a home that has disproportionately high energy usage what we've seen in a couple of the very small pilots, right? We're talking about pilots with like 20, 30 homes, we're seeing that in fact they're getting more than the 20% savings that they get in some high usage households because they're taking a household, they're insulating it, they're like, you know, they're, they're fixing some of the problems that may have exacerbated energy usage beyond what a normal house with high energy usage might be experiencing, right? And so you're, you're taking that and being able to get even more energy efficiency savings reducing energy impacts, reducing, you know across the board it's all those, you know, I think they call them triple, triple bottom line.

Josh Raulerson (29:03):

Well, that, I have the sense that when you're thinking about bang for buck and you know, the impact of, of the spending, it's hard to beat energy efficiency, not just in residential, but if you really want to devote resources to lowering carbon emissions, that's a really good place to start.

Jeaneen Zappa (29:17):

It is. It's the least cost measure across the board without a doubt almost every time, right? I'm sure there's exceptions to that rule, Josh, but it is consistently dollar for dollar, a very useful investment. And you know, you often have double, triple return and you may have a first cost like many things, right? Depending upon the kind of measure you're putting in, but you're going to have lasting year over year savings, right? So that operational savings has to be taken into account.

Elizabeth Marx (29:47):

Well, you know, it's also, like you think about it, a program across the board that can reduce residential energy usage, you're then reducing when the energy usage is peaking, which means you may be able to reduce kind of the, you know, the peaker plans that are necessary to feed the grid, right? So there are grid benefits to this project, this program, right, that we will see. And now there's lot going into infrastructure. And if we can use that money to make our grid more resilient rather than building it out to handle more load because we're actually working to reduce the load you know, you have other benefits that are really going to come out of this program.

Josh Raulerson (30:33):

Well, Liz, Jeaneen, thank you so much for sharing your perspective on this and you know, I guess congratulations.

Jeaneen Zappa (30:39):

Thank you. There's a whole lot of people who worked on this. We are so proud to be part of it, but we're excited to see it happen and just want it to succeed. So, and thank you Josh, so much for the opportunity to help push it forward.

Elizabeth Marx (30:50):

Yes, thank you for highlighting this program and yes, we had a very small role and we were happy to be involved. But there were so many folks from housing and health and, you know, community groups that have, have come together around this. So I'd be remiss if I let you say congratulations to us and congratulations to all those that worked on it. And thank you.

Josh Raulerson (31:14):

Congratulations, everybody. Thanks again for being on the show.

Jeaneen Zappa (31:16):

Thank you, Josh.

Josh Raulerson (31:28):

Elizabeth Marx is executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, and Jeaneen Zappa is executive director of the Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance. You can learn more about why housing is a critical piece of the climate puzzle in Pennsylvania via the show notes for this episode, Pennsylvania Legacies number 181 at our website, it's at pecpa.org, p e c p a .org. There you can stream all past episodes of the Pennsylvania Legacies Podcast. Of course, it's also available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and anywhere else you find podcasts. Or just point your browser directly to p e c pa .org. While you're there, check out news about all the other work PEC is doing, not only in energy and climate, but also watershed protection and restoration, trails and public lands, and the role they play in Pennsylvania's growing outdoor economy, reforestation and restoration of formerly mined lands across the commonwealth and much more. It's at pecpa.org, p e c p a .org. That's all for this time. Hope you can catch the next episode coming your way in about two weeks. For the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, I'm Josh Raulerson, and thanks for listening.