Meta’s Silicon Valley home plans to decarbonize 95% of buildings

Technology hub Menlo Park, California, home to Meta, is teaming up with Brooklyn, New York-based BlocPower in a new form of public-private partnership to electrify thousands of buildings to help meet a 2030 climate goal of carbon neutrality.

The small California city, with a population of roughly 35,000, estimates the fossil fuel consumption of buildings at 41% of its total emissions. BlocPower, a past CNBC Disruptor 50 company, is among the leaders in retrofitting residential and commercial real estate to reduce fossil fuel use. The Menlo Park plan will start small, with 25 buildings to be electrified this year. It is voluntary, but the plan is to increase that to over 1,000 buildings per year starting in 2024. It includes the installation of heat pumps for air cooling and heating, heat pumps for water, electric vehicle charging stations, and solar power and battery storage.

“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,” said Angela Sherry Evans, Environmental Quality Commissioner, City of Menlo Park, in a statement announcing the deal.

Electrifying 95% of existing buildings will “dramatically reduce” reliance on natural gas, she said, which is responsible for almost half of Menlo Park’s greenhouse gas emissions.

BlocPower already works with New York college town Ithaca, where Cornell University is based, which became the first municipality to commit to a 100% decarbonization plan and use a new public-private partnership model. Ithaca lined up $100 million in private financing last summer to support the effort from private equity partner Alturus.

BlocPower founder and CEO Donnel Baird told CNBC last year that 100 million buildings across the U.S. waste $100 billion a year on fossil fuels. “There are significant savings that can be introduced,” Baird said.

Building direct energy and electricity use comprise roughly 38% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the US Green Building Council, and the majority of buildings that will make up urban environments through 2030 already exist.

Heating systems, including water heating and space heating, are big drivers of energy use in residential and commercial buildings and are targets of climate projects, as well as insulation and lighting, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. In cities with less population growth, there will also be a larger share of legacy buildings in need of upgrades rather than new constructions in booming population hubs.

Cities have emerged as leaders on decarbonization because much of the law related to buildings is in the realm of state and local governments, and they set building codes. As more cities and towns look to lead on climate, tapping into private investors in combination…