Millions of dollars from the worst US gas leak are now available to help residents electrify homes

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Millions of dollars of settlement money from the largest known methane leak in the United States are now available to affected residents to replace gas-powered appliances with electric ones. Organizations involved in distributing the money say it will help create safer and cleaner homes.

The announcement makes available the first $20 million in incentive funding from the Aliso Canyon settlement to help home and building owners impacted by the 2015 Los Angeles-area blowout. In total, the program will make $40 million available to help people install heat pumps that cool and heat homes, electric stoves, water heaters and other appliances.

Evan Kamei is the director of TECH Clean California, a state program helping distribute the settlement money. He said the incentives “will help create healthier homes, lower energy costs, deliver cooling, and create local jobs by replacing aging gas appliances with efficient electric appliances.”

Anyone in the affected area with a single-family home will be eligible for the incentives, and certain income-qualifying residents will be eligible for extra funding. Access for multi-property owners will come later.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak took nearly four months to control, sickened thousands of families and forced them from their homes near the San Fernando Valley to escape a sulfurous stench and maladies including headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

The natural gas storage well failed and uncontrollably released nearly 100,000 tons of methane and other substances into the atmosphere for more than 100 days. Methane is a potent, heat-trapping gas that contributes to extreme weather events worldwide through climate change. The natural gas facility involved in the blowout temporarily closed and later reopened at reduced capacity after being deemed safe to operate.

In 2021, thousands of families reached a settlement of up to $1.8 billion with the Southern California Gas Co. and its parent company, Sempra Energy. Some 35,000 plaintiffs were compensated after complaining of personal injury and property damage to their homes. SoCalGas spent more than $1 billion on the blowout, with most of the money going to temporarily relocate 8,000 families.

Weldon Kennedy is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Copper, a California startup that sells electric induction stoves and ovens. He said his company got involved with the program to distribute settlement money after the group Energy Solutions highlighted how hard it would be to get people to switch their cooking appliances from gas to electric.

“People have a cultural attachment to gas when it comes to cooking,” Kennedy said. The kind of appliances Copper sells may help mitigate that attachment because they can be plugged into a regular outlet without the expense of rewiring that is usually associated with switching from gas-powered appliances to electric ones.

Cooking with electricity comes with health benefits. Gas stoves, which 47 million Americans use, release pollutants like nitrogen dioxide that’s been linked to asthma and cancer-causing benzene.

Products like electric appliances are one way to address the significant amount of pollution driving climate change that comes from cooking, heating and cooling living spaces and providing hot water in buildings.

Income-qualified residents affected by the Aliso leak are eligible for up to $31,800 worth of incentives to cover the cost of electric installations in their homes.

Switching from gas to electricity can save energy and lower bills.

Carol Kamei, Evan Kamei's 72-year-old mother, has lived for 46 years near the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Facility and was one of the plaintiffs in the case against SoCal Gas. She remembers smelling gas and getting nose bleeds. When she read in the news that the leak was also spewing cancer-causing benzene, she knew it was time to go.

Carol Kamei said her nose bleeds went away after moving in with her sister in Hollywood for three months. She recently participated in a health study by the University of California, Los Angeles and found out she has diminished lung capacity, one of the health impacts researchers look for, she said.

“I do know some people that have died from blood-borne illnesses, cancer since then,” Carol Kamei said.

Kamei hopes to use the incentive funding to replace her oven with an electric one. “I’d rather not use gas,” she said.

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