This is part 2 of our talks with Bruce Mast. To get the background on electrification and heat pump technology, review part 1.

In this section, we talk about Bruce’s experience in the energy industry, including why and how he’s in it to overcome the challenges of deploying win-win solutions. Getting a heat pump water heater is similar to cooking with an induction stove. It’s safer, healthier, more efficient, better for the environment, oftentimes more comfortable, sometimes cheaper…but it’s different. Educating people, including the industry and overcoming old habits to change is the hardest part.

TRAVIS:  Oh okay, so this is what Peninsula Climate Comfort is doing.

BRUCE:  That’s right. We’re going to take five households now, and really go through this process with them from start to finish. And do all the design assistance, and help them at every step of the way. And then figure out from that, those lessons learned, we’ll figure out how to scale this to do hundreds and then thousands of homes.

TRAVIS:  Isn’t that a lot of physics?

BRUCE:  You know, surprisingly little.

TRAVIS:  Oh really?

BRUCE:  It’s more about economics and human behavior, and some of those everyday things that you don’t even know … The physics, I need to know enough to explain to people just how it works, and explain to them that it’s like your refrigerator. But it’s a little bit of hand waving and not much more than that.

TRAVIS:  You mentioned behavior. Why is behavior one of the challenges?

BRUCE:  People are creatures of habit, and people are comfortable with things that are familiar. For things that are new and different, they need to study it. They need to think about it. Some things just perform differently. If you want to use an induction stove instead of a gas stove… In many ways, induction is a very superior technology, but you have to rethink your approach to cooking a little bit. You’re cooking by a number rather than by looking at how high the blue lame is, right? So, it’s just developing new patterns of thinking about things.

TRAVIS:  Oh, I remember … When I lived in Asia and Europe, I used induction stoves. At the beginning it was strange, it really was. I couldn’t lift my pot. But then, after a while I realized how I don’t have to worry about things burning. It’s also super safe, and that’s on top of being more efficient.

BRUCE:  Right, yeah, and they’re so much cleaner and healthier. You have much more control over the temperature. There’s a lot of reasons why they just perform better, but [induction stoves] are different, and so people need to get used to that. There’s also an education issue around understanding what people can do to protect the environment, and how to do it, and where to go, and what resources to look for. There’s a whole bunch of education that needs to go on as well.

TRAVIS:  Well great. I hope I’m helping by letting you talk about this. What would be some of the differences with the heat pump water heater versus a furnace?

BRUCE:  If heat pump water heaters are designed correctly and installed correctly, they should run just like a furnace. The heat pump water heater takes longer to heat the water. We would want to size them a little bit differently, so that you have more capacity and more storage. We want to make sure that water’s nice and hot well before you actually need it so that you don’t run out.

BRUCE:  There are some real design questions. We also have an electric clothes dryer that use some advanced technologies. I find that it takes a little longer to dry the clothes, so I need to plan around that and schedule my day a little differently. But, like I say, at the end of the day, it’s worth it because we’re getting these energy services that we need in our lives without creating these negative impacts that affect the planet and our children and grandchildren.

TRAVIS:  In the energy business, I keep on encountering more people like you, and it’s really inspiring. I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, and I saw that you had worked with Build it Green, and before then you were with Peace Corps as a science teacher. Is that correct?

BRUCE:  That’s correct.

TRAVIS:  What in your life made you go this direction? You seem to have focused your life around service and the planet earlier than most. I think in the past five years in the Silicon there are a lot more people wanting to apply their expertise to help the planet. What made you get into this much earlier? You did Peace Corp a while back.

BRUCE:  I think it really traces back to my childhood. I’m in my mid 50s. I grew up in the 70’s and the energy crisis. There was an oil embargo, and the gas lines at the gas stations were down the block and around the corner. There were just all kinds of concerns about placement and availability. That’s when I develop this awareness that we need to be more self-sufficient. We need to use energy more efficiently. We need to rely less on the fossil fuels, and we’ve got all this free energy from the sun. It was this early awareness.

BRUCE:  Then, like you said, I went to the Peace Corps. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. At the end of my two years of service I had this fork in the road where I could stay in the foreign service ,or I could come back to the United States.

BRUCE:  The thing that convinced me to come back to the United States was realizing that all of these Africans that I was working with in my village, they all wanted to live an American lifestyle. They all wanted to go to America, and they thought of America as this fabulously wealthy paradise. They wanted to live just like Americans.

BRUCE:  I realized that I couldn’t really tell them “no, you don’t want that, you shouldn’t want that. You shouldn’t consume all of the stuff that Americans want.” Instead, I had to go back to the United States and model a lower-impact lifestyle. I started helping people figure out how to live well and thrive without consuming so much resources. So that’s what brought me back to the U.S., by trying to get into the solar business. But this is the 90s. Reagan had killed the solar industry, so I shifted my attention to energy efficiency, and here I am.

TRAVIS:  What is Build it Green?

BRUCE:  Build it Green is a nonprofit that I helped found back in the year 2004. For me, what was exciting about Build it Green was that we were looking beyond just the energy efficiency. We were looking at all aspects of the home and how it impacts people’s health and comfort and well-being. Also, we were looking at the sustainability of the materials that go into it. We were just looking at how to reduce the overall environmental impacts–actually making homes a positive thing for people and the environment.

BRUCE:  It’s really exciting. I’ve learnt a lot through that. I spent about 12 years with Build it Green as a senior director, helping to design programs, helping to bring in new funds, land new contracts, and develop new business. Through that, I learned a whole lot about the interaction between health and energy, and energy and water, and water and materials and resources, and just how interconnected all of these things are. It’s really a wonderful experience.

TRAVIS:  In your more than two decades experience in the business of lowering environmental impact, what has been the biggest challenge? Or what are some of the big challenges that you had to face?

BRUCE:  I mean a lot of it is just inertia. We have our ways of doing things, and everything is going just fine. Thank you very much. Why should I put a lot of time and energy and money in changing, right? Basic inertia is the big impediment. So that’s one. The other is the need for a  really strong reason, and this reason also has to resonate with their own self-interest, as well as doing good for the planet. It helps if we don’t have to rely solely on altruism. I like to offer solutions that also appeal to selfish people.

TRAVIS:  The “win-win” approach from business, huh?

BRUCE:  That’s right, that’s right. For me that’s a recurring challenge, i.e. figuring out how to get those interests to align, so that people are connecting on self-interest, and at the same time they’re advancing our community interests and our societal interests.

TRAVIS:  When it comes to electrification, how do you think that will come together? What are some of the win-wins in electrification where it’s really good for the community, the planet, and it satisfies my selfish needs?

BRUCE:  I think there are several things. We already talked about induction stove cooking, and how that actually is much cleaner and healthier. The fumes that come off your gas stove go away. In all of these cases, if we can turn off that gas line with all the leaks, and the methane that comes all of that and the danger of fire, that’s always good. Also, we’re minimizing carbon monoxide risks inside the home, so those are all health benefits.

BRUCE:  If we design these projects right, especially when we combine it with solar power that’s becoming cheaper and cheaper, we can lower people’s gas bills more than we’re increasing their electric bills; so that we can lower their overall energy bills. If you start to combine these different benefits, they all start to add up.

TRAVIS:  For me personally–let’s say I don’t care anything about anybody else—it will be cheaper on an ongoing basis. It will be safer. Are there some other things? Would it be easier? Would it be more convenient? What other things would electrification bring?

BRUCE:  Hot water here is going to deliver hot water just the way that it currently does. When we do space heating with the heat pump, we’re not just looking at the furnace or the heat pump. We’re looking at the whole home. We’re looking at how the “building shell” performs and how the heating ducts perform, and how they deliver air to the different rooms.

BRUCE:  We’re looking at all the things that we also need to do to make that home more efficient and more comfortable. So, extra efficiency and more comfort are also big wins.

TRAVIS:  I don’t have to make a sacrifice, but I also get a bonus of more comfort.

BRUCE:  For example, here in California, the estimate is that the typical home with air ducts (to move hot or cold air to different rooms), on average, leak about one third of the air? So, you’re heating all of this air, and two-thirds of it gets to the room where you want it, and a third of it is wasted, right?

BRUCE:  Before you replace the furnace with a heat pump, you should first seal that duct so that you can put in a smaller heat pump, and it doesn’t have to work as hard. When you do things in the right order, not only are you saving energy and saving money, but your home ends up being more comfortable and healthier as well.

TRAVIS:  Wow, that sounds good. Of course, on top of all that, you help the community and then the planet.

BRUCE:  That’s correct.

Continue to part 3 where we wrap up our chat with Bruce Mast from Peninsula Climate Comfort. He talks about the future and shares with us a very effective energy lifehack.