The Community Retrofit Trust: Incentivizing Deep Energy Retrofits in Massachusetts' Triple Deckers

To meet its 2050 net-zero carbon emissions goals, Massachusetts must rapidly retrofit its aging stock of three-story multi-family homes, also known as “Triple Deckers.” However, high upfront capital costs, disparities between subsidized gas and electric energy rates, complex eligibility criteria, and misaligned incentives for landlords and renters constrain the widespread adoption of deep energy retrofits (DERs) in small multi-family homes. Drawing on energy democracy and reparative planning theory, this thesis reframes Triple Decker retrofits as a pathway to social and spatial transformation that empowers residents through cooperative participatory processes. This project proposes a practical framework for a “Community Retrofit Trust” which uses systems of distributed energy savings, community ownership of DER assets, and cooperative governance to ensure tenants, building owners, and neighbors in environmental justice communities share benefits from DERs while maintaining rental affordability. A proposed values-based decision-making process also helps community cooperatives adapt the Retrofit Trust’s framework to their unique social contexts. Descriptive case studies of two community solar initiatives illustrate how cooperative approaches that build trust, bundle projects and local expertise, and expand opportunities for participation can efficiently distribute energy benefits across a community while increasing investment and lowering costs. A feasibility analysis of a Community Retrofit Trust in Boston examines the strengths, challenges, and contradictions of incentivizing Triple Decker DERs through a cooperative approach.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Chuttani, Milan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Crockett, Karilyn

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/162155

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/162155