How NOT to do Electrification

September 2023

BEC have been involved with many different kinds of projects that incorporate some level of electrification.  With new construction, it’s fairly straightforward to go fully electric, it often provides better end-use performance, it can be more cost effective than the fossil fuel-fired alternatives, and there are a number of different approaches to serve nearly every situation.  Retrofit provides more challenges for sure (and challenges are where the fun is!) but we see many options for existing buildings to electrify.

But there are many pitfalls to avoid!  Electrification done wrong is the opposite of decarbonization.

BEC’s own Chris Kennedy, Wesley Stanhope, and Ken Neuhauser will share some of what we have observed relative to the near misses, blind spots, misinformed assumptions, unintended consequences, stubborn entrenched habits, and, in some cases, brain farts that have made electrification efforts fall short of achieving decarbonization.  We offer to share and bare these egregious examples so that they might serve as allegories to warn the earnest practitioners putting themselves and their work on the line to fight the good fight.