Entry Category
Program Entry – Best Environmental Protection
Name of Intervention/ Program
Year of the Water Heater
Background and Situation Analysis
Buildings account for approximately one-third of the City’s greenhouse gas emissions, making home electrification essential to reaching the community’s carbon neutrality goal. Being in an area served by a public, not-for-profit utility committed to carbon-free, clean electricity, switching buildings from gas to electricity directly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Yet early outreach revealed a key barrier. Asking a resident to consider the full scope of electrifying their home was too overwhelming. Many homeowners were unfamiliar with heat pump technology, uncertain about costs, and hesitant to replace a functioning gas appliance. The City designed a campaign in response to that challenge, with the goal of making the switch to electric appliances feel practical, familiar, and achievable. Rather than promoting whole-home electrification, the City focused on a single, high-impact action. Direct experience with an electric appliance increases the likelihood that a person will choose electric in the future, underscoring the value of a “gateway” electric technology. The City identified replacing gas water heaters with heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) as an ideal first step. Water heating represents nearly half of a home’s building emissions in this region, making it one of the most effective first steps toward electrification. Upgrading can also be minimally disruptive, since installation is often a one-day project. Lastly, timing made the issue especially relevant, as regional air district regulations will phase out new gas water heaters beginning in 2027. Together, the approachable project, urgent policy timing, and high emissions impact created a strong opportunity for action. Despite these factors, installations of heat pump water heaters using the utility’s rebate were 25 in 2023 and 61 in 2024 across the City of about 88,000 residents. The Year of the Water Heater campaign design was built on extensive community engagement conducted in 2023 and 2024. Staff met residents where they were, at neighborhood events, community festivals, and public gatherings, completing more than 330 conversations and collecting 238 paper surveys representing diverse neighborhoods, languages, incomes, and household types. The research consistently identified three concerns across all demographic groups: • Upfront cost • Home safety • Home health These findings directly shaped campaign messaging and program design. The City transformed the challenge of electrification and decarbonization outreach into an opportunity through the “Year of the Water Heater,” a citywide education and outreach campaign that paired creative marketing, responsive community engagement, and one of the region’s most generous stacked rebate offerings to make switching to electric at home simple, affordable, and approachable.
Priority Audiences(s)
The campaign was designed to resonate with families and older adults, who responded most strongly to messages about home safety, indoor air quality, and health. Priority audiences included both homeowners and renters. Outreach was tailored to each audience to ensure that the benefits of electrification resonated beyond rebate-eligible homeowners. Materials were offered in multiple languages and through a variety of community settings to ensure the campaign was accessible across diverse neighborhoods and household types. This broader framing helped create a more inclusive pathway toward electrification and ensured that the campaign reflected the entire community, not just one segment.
Behavioral Objectives
The Year of the Water Heater aimed to increase resident awareness and understanding of heat pump water heaters (HPWH) and motivate homeowners to choose HPWHs when replacing aging gas water heaters. Its behavioral objective was to move residents from awareness to action by making HPWHs feel understandable, affordable, and worthwhile. A central goal was to reduce the most significant barrier identified by residents: upfront cost. The campaign addressed this by introducing a limited-time City rebate and clearly showing how rebates could be stacked to reduce the effective installation price to a level similar to, or lower than, a conventional gas replacement. Outreach also emphasized the benefits residents said mattered most, including home safety, home health, and future readiness. At a broader level, the campaign sought to normalize heat pump water heaters as a practical first step toward residential electrification. The more homeowners who install heat pump water heaters during the campaign year and share their positive experiences with family, friends, and neighbors, the more readily the rest of the community is likely to follow. By making one high-impact action visible, familiar, and achievable, the campaign worked to shift household decision-making and build momentum for continued progress toward carbon neutrality.
Description of Strategy/Intervention
The Year of the Water Heater campaign was designed to meet goals by addressing audience barriers and benefits. Primary behavior-change strategies incorporated research results: messaging focused on resident-centered benefits, clear and stackable incentives to address upfront cost, and consistent branding. Resident Centered Messaging: The campaign centered on the idea that water heater replacement is a decision many households will face soon, and that residents should be able to make that choice with confidence. Messaging focused on the benefits residents cared about most: improved indoor air quality, lower utility bills, reduced fire risk, and readiness for an upcoming regional regulation limiting the installation of gas water heaters. This framing avoided technical or climate-first language and instead connected the program to everyday household priorities. By speaking directly to what matters most to residents, the campaign made electrification feel personally relevant and worthwhile to pay attention to. Limited-time City Incentive: A local incentive was created to address the most significant barrier to adoption: upfront cost. The rebate was structured to work alongside existing utility, state, and federal incentives, reducing the effective installation cost to a level comparable to or lower than that of replacing a conventional gas water heater. Just as important, the incentive was designed to be easy to use, with a streamlined application process that reduced friction for residents. Using one application, City residents could get both local and utility rebates, significantly reducing installation cost. Additional incentives for income-qualified homeowners and seasonal bonus funding further increased accessibility and helped ensure that households with greater financial constraints could still participate. Branding: Consistent branding was central to the Year of the Water Heater strategy. A friendly mascot, Wattson the Heat Pump Water Heater, gave the campaign a recognizable identity and helped make an unfamiliar technology feel approachable, memorable, and family-friendly. The character appeared consistently across outreach materials, educational tools, digital communications, events, and community-facing activities, creating a cohesive public presence that reinforced the same message across every touchpoint. At events, Staff wore a Wattson costume that drew attention and started conversations. This consistent visual identity helped build familiarity and trust while making the campaign more engaging for residents of all ages. Campaign interventions were designed to reach residents where they would be: direct mailers to homes most likely to benefit from upgrading, creating themed program-branded outreach for events/audiences, and creative, interactive engagement to raise awareness of heat pump water heaters across the community. Direct mail: Multiple channels reinforced the same core message. In addition to social media, digital advertising, and electronic newsletters, materials were mailed directly to homes across the City. Throughout the campaign, residents received printed materials tailored to their interests. Materials mailed include postcards sent to homes with features like solar or older construction that would result in higher-than-average benefits to the homeowner from going electric, as well as utility bill inserts for City water customers. The campaign was also featured in the City-wide biennial newsletter mailed to each home. Themed outreach: Using outreach materials and activities themed to the event or to an audience strengthened engagement. Messaging and materials were shaped around audience needs, seasonal topics, and to match the theme of in-person events, helping the campaign feel timely rather than generic. For example, Wattson the Heat Pump Water Heater was featured on Halloween and Lunar New Year stickers, featured on a summer photo wall, and Wattson “submitted an audition video” for a popular dating show in a social media video. Water Heater “Date-ing Game”: Incorporating an interactive element made the topic of water heaters more accessible and engaging. Presented as a game, completing this very short survey entered residents into a random drawing to win a prize. The Date-ing Game prompted residents to think about the age, fuel type, and condition of their water heater, build awareness of when replacement might be needed, and introduce the option of a heat pump water heater upgrade. By framing the topic in a playful, low-pressure way, the game helped residents learn something practical while also reinforcing the broader campaign message. The activity was transcreated for Spanish and Chinese audiences using a birthday theme, “How Old is your Water Heater,” so that it felt culturally relevant and engaging across communities. Survey results provided the City a stronger picture of the age and fuel types of water heaters across the City. Together, these strategies and interventions created a unified approach: increase awareness of the benefits and remove barriers to increase community understanding and support the real adoption of heat pump water heaters.
Implementation
The Year of the Water Heater launched at the City’s April 2025 annual Earth Day Celebration. The campaign’s coordinated outreach plan translated resident priorities into action-oriented messaging, delivered through multiple touchpoints with a single, clear, and increasingly familiar visual identity. Multiple channels implemented to reach residents included: • Events and neighborhood meetings, • Newsletters distributed in four languages, • Direct mail, utility bill inserts, and an article in the City’s biennial print newsletter, • Weekly social media posts and intermittent digital advertising, and • In-person conversations with residents across the City. To remove the greatest barrier identified by residents, upfront cost, the City launched a limited-time $2,000 Electric Water Heater Rebate, integrated into the local utility’s existing rebate process. Homeowners could combine the City’s rebate with $2,000 in utility incentives, along with available state rebates and federal tax credits. Depending on eligibility and timing, residents could receive up to $5,900 in combined incentives, bringing installation costs down to levels comparable to or lower than those of replacing a conventional gas water heater. The rebate process was streamlined by design. By integrating the City’s rebate into the utility’s existing application process, the program reduced administrative complexity and made participation easier for residents. This was an important operational choice, since ease of use was central to the campaign’s behavior-change goal. Over the course of the campaign, messaging shifted from the benefits of a heat pump water heater to available incentives and finally to an emphasis on acting immediately, as incentives are available for a limited time. A strong in-person component reinforced the broader communications effort. Staff attended 19 community events and neighborhood meetings, where residents could ask questions, learn about the technology, and better understand the rebate opportunity. These interactions were especially valuable for building trust and helping residents navigate a topic that was new to many. Bilingual staff and multilingual materials helped ensure the campaign was accessible to a wide range of households. Public City events included a Summer Kick-off, nonprofit events serving income-qualified communities, neighborhood Ice Cream Socials across the City, Lunar New Year, Technology Showcase, the Halloween event, presenting at the Teen Center, and more. Public engagement was increased by connecting outreach and Wattson the Heat Pump Water Heater materials to each community gathering attended. In addition to the Wattson costume, Wattson was featured in a themed sticker or temporary tattoo for each event, a City-themed coloring and activity book, a coin savings bank, a photo wall backdrop, and thermal color-changing “putty” that helped residents understand how heat pumps transfer energy. The “Water Heater Date-ing Game,” which invited residents to learn about their current water heater and participate in a prize drawing, turned a technical subject into an interactive and memorable experience. Sixty-eight responses provided surprising insight into the City’s residential water heater population. For example, the average age of water heaters was 10.8 years, close to the upper end of the intended 8-12-year life span for gas water heaters. The collected data highlighted a significant opportunity to switch to electric at the appliance’s end of life, optimizing value for the homeowner. Year of the Water Heater outreach and education encouraged residents to start considering heat pump water heaters and the upgrade process now, so they are ready in case of a water heater failure. The information collected also supported tailored outreach to residents with the oldest water heaters, which have the greatest potential for emissions reductions, and allowed the City to promote electric options before residents urgently needed to make a choice. Insights from community engagement informed real-time campaign refinements. This adaptive approach allowed staff to increasingly tailor subsequent outreach and motivate action by making heat pump water heaters understandable, financially appealing, and relevant to City residents. Collectively, implementation elements, including strategic messaging, diverse touchpoints, streamlined processes, and community-centered design, proved essential to program success. Each communication channel reinforced the others, ensuring residents encountered consistent messaging while reducing friction at decision points.
Evaluation Methods and Results
The campaign’s effectiveness was evaluated using a comprehensive mix of participation metrics, digital analytics, and year-over-year behavioral comparisons, demonstrating that the Year of the Water Heater successfully converted awareness into measurable action. The clearest indicator of success was residential heat pump water heater adoption during the campaign, which increased by 21% compared with the same period the prior year. A meaningful shift in consumer behavior among the priority audience was reflected in high demand for the City’s electric water heater rebate. The original rebate allocation was fully reserved within seven months, prompting two additional funding rounds that ultimately quadrupled the program budget. This unprecedented uptake demonstrated that when residents became more familiar with a technology, benefits were framed around their priorities, and financial barriers were substantially reduced, behavior change followed. The program has supported 127 completed heat pump water heater installations with 87 additional reserved rebates, representing 214 households committed to electrification. Digital engagement was strong, with over 2,400 website visits from 1,600+ unique users. Beyond digital channels, the campaign extended reach through 19 large and small community events across the City and reached thousands of additional residents through newsletters, direct mail, social media, and digital advertising. This layered engagement strategy ensured that awareness reached the priority population, regardless of where residents typically seek information. Over time, residents at events had increasingly heard of the campaign, Wattson the Heat Pump Water Heater Mascot, and the City incentive. The installed heat pump water heaters are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 116 metric tons annually. Because the community’s electricity is supplied by a clean energy provider, electrification directly translates into emissions reductions without requiring residents to adopt additional behaviors. At the household level, residents are expected to achieve average annual utility savings of approximately $240, improve indoor air quality, and reduce their home’s greenhouse gas emissions by about half. The campaign’s success demonstrates that effective environmental marketing requires more than financial incentives; it requires building public confidence through creative, evidence-based strategies. Key elements that drove behavior change include: focusing on a single appliance rather than overwhelming residents with whole-home electrification options; developing a recognizable campaign identity that made a complicated topic memorable; tailoring messaging to resident priorities; and meeting residents in their communities rather than expecting them to self-initiate information-seeking. These results offer a replicable model for other local governments seeking to accelerate residential electrification. By implementing benefit- and barrier-based marketing strategies and effective community engagement, the Year of the Water Heater demonstrates that strategic social marketing drives measurable environmental progress at the community level.
Entry Number: 14