Arizona public power utility Salt River Project is offering its low-income customers free virtual home energy assessments. Up to 2,000 qualified customers can receive the Home Energy Assessment. As a part of the virtual assessment, they will receive a thorough evaluation of their home performed by a highly trained “Energy Ambassador,” up to $250 worth of energy-saving products and a customized report of their home’s energy performance.

A mix of planning and overarching EV strategies could help American cities and utilities alike to prepare for and avoid some of the heaviest costs of what a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study labels an inevitability: an influx of electric vehicles. Grid reliability demands a plan, as the next decade will come to be swarmed with EVs of all sizes plugging into charging stations at home, at work and along transportation routes.

The inclusion of home energy efficiency scores in online real estate listings would influence buyers to purchase more efficient homes, according to research from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The first-of-its-kind study presented a sample of more than 1,500 potential homebuyers with a mock real estate website of home listings, some of which included energy efficiency scores.

Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, lower-income families are struggling to pay their energy bills. That’s a big concern during extreme events such as summer heat waves, which can be deadly – especially for elderly people, young children, people of color and the poor. We ran a nationally representative survey in May 2020 of U.S. low-income households to measure energy insecurity and found that 13 percent of respondents had been unable to pay an energy bill during the prior month.

ChargePoint has raised $127 million, its latest massive round of equity financing to build out a U.S. and European charging network to meet the needs of a fast-growing global electric vehicle fleet. ChargePoint’s network includes 114,000 charging points in the U.S. and Europe, including home chargers and public charging stations, making it the single largest EV charging system provider in the world.

Hawaiian Electric has pledged to have every passenger car, SUV, light pickup and minivan in its fleet be electric by 2025. “We recognize our responsibility to lead our state’s eMobility movement by example,” Aki Marceau, Hawaiian Electric Electrification of Transportation Director, said. “We’re committing to purchasing EVs and installing the needed chargers. We also want to encourage and help others to electrify fleets and provide workplace charging for employees and customers.”