QuitCarbon Helps Everyone Electrify their Home

Harvest sat down with Founder and CEO Cooper Marcus of QuitCarbon to discuss all things home electrification. Both our companies are guided by the mission of ensuring homeowners have the best experience when replacing gas equipment with all-electric appliances. That includes saving money, slashing carbon emissions, and being more comfortable in their homes. In Part 1, we discuss Cooper’s personal journey that led him to found QuitCarbon, what QuitCarbon does for homeowners, and what the most impactful thing homeowners can do to quit carbon in their homes.

David Tuft: You didn't start off as a building science person or a climate person. How did wind up founding QuitCarbon?

Cooper Marcus: After college, I was lucky enough to be able to buy and remodel some homes in Santa Cruz and Oakland. I became, in effect, a general contractor working with subcontractors swinging a hammer, learning about the built environment by building it. I just love homes. I love buildings and I love the business and the people that work around them.

In the last few years, I was lucky enough to lead a team of data scientists at PG&E in building a wildfire risk model. We were applying advanced machine learning techniques to deal with the outcomes of climate change and the impacts of worse wildfires. It really brought me around to thinking I should be working on avoiding the worst of it rather than assuming it's gonna happen. 

Around that time. I was planning a remodel of my Victorian home here in San Francisco. I love Victorians. I love old homes and making them new again, but keeping their charm. I came to learn around that time that natural gas is not so natural – and that it's possible to have a home free of fossil fuels. So I asked my architect at the time, “How do we do this?” And he said, “I don't know how. You're going to need to hire a consultant.”

Cooper Marcus: So I found one and they were great. I paid them $9,000 for a detailed analysis of how to get my home off of fossil fuels. 

David Tuft: Holy cow.

Cooper Marcus: And that was the light bulb moment. I looked at all these homes along the street and I thought to myself, if the route to avoiding the worst of climate change is getting all of our homes off of fossil fuels runs through a $9,000 plan for each home, we’re screwed. There's got to be a better way.

That got me started on a multi-year journey of research and experimentation, spending a lot of time with contractors, with manufacturers, and with homeowners – trying to figure out what's keeping us from electrifying our homes. That led to QuitCarbon, where we provide the guidance and analysis to get your home off of fossil fuels – for free.

David Tuft: That's incredible. What turned out to be the biggest things that you could do to have an impact on emissions?

Cooper Marcus: One of the surprising things is that for many homes, their single largest source of climate impact is their water heater or their furnace. 

It's not their stove for many homes. It's not their car because folks just don't drive much anymore. And many people are already switching to hybrid or electric. For people who travel a lot, it's their air travel, but many folks don't. A lot of people are already switching to less meat in their diets. 

It's that machine in your closet that you just never think about. Giving you hot water, making you comfortable. But also, giving you bad service in terms of damaging your future prospects. Making your local air quality worse, the climate worse, increasing the risk of climate change. I had no idea how much fossil fuel is really being burned by these machines, especially maybe most insidiously in older homes. 

My mother's in Berkeley where some of her appliances have pilot lights. So even when she's not using her heaters, they're still sitting there burning a little bit of gas all the time. Causing pollution. Impacting her bill. This is one of the biggest surprises to me. The climate impacts of just those two machines: your water heater and your furnace. 

Another surprise was how relatively little climate impact there is from your stove and your dryer. Those are gas appliances that people touch and use every day. And the perception is they’re burning a lot of gas. Well, it's really a small amount. But that stove, holy cow! The research is now crystal clear. It's terrible for your health. So rather than the climate outside your home, it's radically and dangerously impacting the climate inside your home. There was another surprise for me.

David Tuft: Walk me through what happens when somebody comes to you and says,  “I want to electrify my home.” 

Cooper Marcus: People come to us with all sorts of things – “I want to electrify my home,” “my furnace failed,” “it's getting hot these days, I think I need air conditioning,” “what about my big bills?” Or “I don't know what you do, but my friend said you're great, so can you help me?”

We teach and educate folks on our website. We have a growing library of content. Like, what is an electrified home? Why is it a good idea? Folks then click the pink button and sign up. We ask a few questions about your home, your furnace, and your utility bills.

All through this process we offer easy ability to get in touch with us. We can even come to your house and give you a home energy score, along with answering the questions about your home. Our platform produces a unique and personalized roadmap for getting your home upgraded from dirty fossil fuel to clean, safe electric appliances – with maximized rebates and minimized project costs. 

It's really easy to make electrification more expensive and more complicated than it needs to be. Part of why we came into existence was that we kept hearing stories about folks who had called contractors. They were able to get a bid, maybe even able to get a project done for a heat pump or something else. But then when we looked at what the contractor had done, we discovered it was too big. It used up too much of the home’s electrical budget, or the system was oversized. There are lots of different reasons for this but we needed something that thought about the whole home. So QuitCarbon is going to give you a whole home road map. We can then talk with you about it. Answer your questions. We keep updating the roadmap automatically as things change. And things are changing all the time. Rebates are coming and going. Prices are changing. New equipment’s arriving. New financing opportunities are arriving.

When you're feeling comfortable and confident about the costs and why you want to do this, then you can ask us for a connection to a contractor. They'll come by your house and they'll give you a bid. We will then benchmark the bid for you. We are not a contractor. We don't sell projects. But we'll provide an analysis about it. Is this price fair according to local standards? Is the scope of work correct according to what we've recommended for your house? And we'll say, “Hey, this looks good. We think you should proceed.” And if it doesn't, we'll get back to the contractor.

The contractor does the work. We help make sure that it's wrapped up correctly, that the rebates are handled smoothly. The equipment is configured for optimal operation and minimal bills. And clients finish feeling happy. We want them to tell their stories to their neighbors and colleagues: “I did it, it was great.”

[Lightly edited for length and clarity]