HEAT Campaign

In early 2025, TCAT launched its Home Energy Affordability for Thurston (HEAT) campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to advocate for local policies and incentives that will bring down high energy bills for low income renters, while protecting their health and safety (especially during heat waves or very cold winters) and reducing the pollution that causes climate change. To help out, contact board member Tom Crawford. Here are more details:

We know that one of the big barriers to achieving home energy efficiency goals in the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan is the challenge of installing energy efficiency improvements in rental homes. The tenants usually pay the energy bills, and want more efficient and cleaner HVAC and appliances. Landlords control the ability to make these improvements, but don't pay the utility bills and so don't have a financial incentive to weatherize or provide energy efficient heating or other appliances.

With that in mind, TCAT co-sponsored, with the Tenants Union of Washington, a workshop on tenants' legal protections, climate change, and how to stay safe during heat waves (that are becoming more frequent in Thurston County). The idea of this workshop was to explore the connections between climate change and tenants' rights (under recent laws passed by the Olympia City Council and the Washington State Legislature). Participants shared how difficult it is to keep up with rising energy bills, and the fact that few rental units have air conditioning. For those that do have A/C, a heat wave adds to their energy bills.

We recognize that we need energy efficiency improvements (including better insulation and heat pumps to replace older inefficient heating systems) in many existing rental homes. While TCAT pushes for those larger policy and incentive programs, we’ve found a relatively inexpensive solution to meet the immediate needs of low income renters. With Climate Commitment Act funding through Seattle-based Front and Centered, our Cooling Thurston project has provided 50 portable heat pumps to low income senior renters. (See our Cooling Thurston web page.) Through this project, we’ve learned that these units can easily be set up in a room to provide cooling in a rental home. Since they are more energy efficient than traditional A/C units, they keep energy costs down. They also provide heat in the winter, to help keep colder rooms warm. So based on input from the tenants’ workshop and other discussions with community members, the HEAT campaign hopes to convince local governments to fund additional portable heat pumps for low income renters in Thurston County.

If you’d like to help low income renters to keep their homes livable and affordable, we need your help! We need people to organize meetings and events, design flyers and other marketing materials, run social media campaigns, connect with local traditional media (newspaper, radio), analyze city and county budgets, prepare proposals for local government, meet with local officials, and anything else you think might be helpful! Contact Tom Crawford, TCAT board member, to get involved.