HVAC Boundary Spanners Podcast

Sick of stop-start incentive programs and 'contractor training' courses? Here are 9 policy ideas that - from the perspective of contractors themselves - can climate policy work for both contractors AND for homeowners.

Is there an easier - and scalable - way to determine if a home and the homeowner are ready for electrification?

In theory, an energy audit can give homeowners a roadmap for planning home energy retrofits. But how does a "free" energy audit play out at the kitchen-table conversation between homeowners and contractors?

We outline a narrow - but perhaps crucial - role that (virtual) energy audits can play in catalyzing consumer awareness and education, leading to better outcomes for both homeowners and contractors

Personal reflections on cultivating optimism while working on things that matter to us

Imagine - if you will - a national business accelerator with the mandate and responsibility for scaling residential decarbonization. What would it look like and what would its core activities be?

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the US offers generous incentives for residential electrification. Will it move the needle?

Much policy attention is focused on providing generous (but short-lived) downstream incentive programs for homeowners - which have unintended consequences - shrinking value propositions for homeowners and contractors alike. Is there a better way?

HVAC and home performance contractors are expected to perform three miracles - technical, social and financial - to successfully execute residential decarbonization projects. Can policy help them achieve this consistently, comfortably and at scale?

Bonus episode on the epistemological challenge underpinning this podcast: how and what we know (or not) about what does (or not) work for residential decarbonization, and how do we get better at knowing better? If knowledge is socially constructed - i.e. we infer reality through jointly-constructed understandings of the world, what happens when white and blue collars communities inhabit different worlds? 

The goal of this podcast is to span the boundaries of white and blue collar worlds to develop a shared understanding of reality, priorities, tools and solutions for decarbonizing homes. To this end, the Boundary Spanners pocast takes tacit (unspoken) knowledge in the white and blue collar worlds and turns it into explicit (out loud) insights for residential decarbonization.  

Four massive selection pressures and existential threats are looming large on the horizon for the HVAC industry, namely:  

Taken together, an important question for fellow Boundary Spanners: What happens when you layer on decarbonization on top of an industry that is already grappling with the existential threat of the 4 Horsemen of the HVAColypse? How can policy makers and HVAC professionals work together to help the industry confront these challenges without imploding under the additional mandate of decarbonization? 

Boundary Spanners is a podcast and a blog on residential decarbonization by Nate (@energysmartohio), the “blue-collar” CEO of HVAC 2.0 and Abhi (@akantamn), a “white-collar” policy researcher based in Canada. Nate and Abhi are taking tacit (unspoken) knowledge in the white and blue collar worlds and making it explicit (out loud) for residential decarbonization. Follow Boundary Spanners on Youtube (show), Substack (blog) or wherever you get your favorite podcasts from.