Climate technology firm BlocPower and the City of Menlo Park have signed a public-private partnership to undertake building electrification across the Menlo Park community in the San Francisco Bay region of northern California.
The project to convert more than 10,000 buildings is in line with the city’s Climate Action Plan of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. Menlo Park is home to headquarters for Facebook parent Meta Platforms.
BlocPower will provide building electrification services. Through this partnership, Menlo Park intends to electrify 15 buildings in 2022, 10 in 2023 and 1,000 or more each year in 2024 and beyond.
Upgrades to buildings will include the installation of heat pumps, EV charging stations, battery storage, solar and heat pump water heaters.
Additionally, BlocPower will use data models to improve project design efficiency. It will leverage equipment supplier relationships to lower costs as the program scales and ensure access to project financing.
Menlo Spark, a local non-profit organisation, is working with BlocPower to raise as much as $35 million to reduce costs for low-to-moderate income homes.
Initially the focus of the program will be the Belle Haven district, which is most affected by climate change.
“We must unlock financing to speed electrification and make it accessible to everyone. This is an exciting opportunity for a public-private partnership with BlocPower, which also strives to help local workforces gain knowledge and job training in the field of decarbonization,” said State Sen. Josh Becker, D-Peninsula. “I support this effort and look forward to using lessons learned from this program to inform the broader policy landscape of building electrification.”
Menlo Park aims to electrify 95 percent of its existing buildings, city Environmental Quality commissioner Angela Sherry Evans said.
“Menlo Park just set a crucial, historic climate precedent as the first city on the West Coast to establish a public/private partnership of this kind,” she added.
Brooklyn-based BlocPower has completed energy projects in 1,200+ buildings. Founded in 2014, the company is backed by investors including Goldman Sachs, Kapor Capital, Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund, Andreessen Horowitz and American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact.
