Program: EMB Pilot
EMB Key Goals & Wins
Electrify My Block (EMB) is a first-of-its-kind Zonal Equity Electrification Pilot designed to test how entire neighborhood gas zones can transition to all-electric service while protecting affordability, strengthening community trust, and generating real-world lessons for California’s gas transition. The pilot operates in disadvantaged communities in Contra Costa County and focuses on residential and small non-residential PG&E customers located in pre-approved gas zones.
EMB is designed to electrify homes and small businesses within shared gas-infrastructure zones, supporting long-term strategies for retiring aging gas infrastructure. The pilot aims to electrify various zones across Contra Costa County, with a focus on whole-zone gas infrastructure retirement, customer bill savings, and no-cost access to new clean electric appliances.
Key Goals
Advance equitable electrification: Ensure disadvantaged communities in Contra Costa County can benefit from new electric appliances without financial barriers.
Test zonal gas transition strategies: Demonstrate how full electrification within targeted gas zones can inform scalable utility transition planning.
Protect household affordability: Support annual bill savings or bill neutrality through full electrification in residential and multifamily homes, as well as small businesses.
Eliminate upfront costs for eligible participants: Layer available incentives and program funds so households can access electrification upgrades without out-of-pocket costs.
Improve health, comfort, and safety: Deliver non-energy benefits such as improved indoor air quality, reduced exposure to combustion-related pollutants, and better year-round comfort.
Create a replicable model: Capture data on costs, customer engagement, bill impacts, funding optimization, and implementation barriers to inform future gas-transition efforts.
The Ortiz Group: Equity & Market Milestones
The Ortiz Group serves as the day-to-day implementation lead for EMB, delivering the customer-facing and field-based support needed to make zonal electrification work in practice. TOG’s role includes multilingual outreach, customer enrollment, home assessments, bill-impact reports, incentive design, contractor coordination, quality assurance, and post-installation follow-up. Where EMB tests a new market model for gas transition, TOG helps translate that model into a trusted community experience. This work is especially important because the pilot depends on customer participation across shared gas zones, meaning success requires more than technology installation. It requires trust, repeated engagement, clear communication, affordability protection, and culturally competent support.
Equity Milestones
Community-first outreach model: TOG uses multilingual ambassadors, door-to-door outreach, events, direct follow-up, and community-facing materials to build trust and increase participation.
Repeated touch-points that improve conversion: Program materials note that repeated exposure through events, flyers, and direct engagement helped residents recognize the program and move toward home assessments.
Customer-centered messaging: The team is adapting messaging around real concerns: high bills, fear of scams, comfort, indoor air quality, and the value of no-cost upgrades.
Affordability-centered implementation: TOG conducts bill-impact analysis and incentive layering so participating households can make informed decisions and avoid financial harm.
No-cost access to clean technologies: EMB’s design focuses on eliminating upfront cost barriers for eligible participants through layered funding and direct-install support.
Market Milestones
Zonal electrification as a scalable gas-transition model: EMB moves beyond one-off appliance replacement and tests how entire shared gas zones can transition together.
Targeted zone prioritization: The program used filters such as zone size, overhead lines, and housing stock characteristics to identify early implementation opportunities.
Diverse service-area learning: The pilot includes an eight-city footprint, with most meters in Richmond, allowing lessons to reflect different building types and community conditions.
Whole-zone learning for future utility planning: EMB is collecting data on program costs, bill impacts, engagement strategies, and funding optimization to inform future zonal electrification efforts.