Scott Institute Student Seminar

For the fifth seminar in the Scott Institute Student Seminar Series, we are featuring Carnegie Mellon University PhD student Jordan Joseph. Joseph researches household energy efficiency retrofits in the hopes of informing their equitable implementation in low-to-moderate-income communities.

Lunch will be provided.

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Jordan Joseph was born and raised in Pittsburgh by a single mother of five kids. Joseph grew up in affordable/subsidized housing (Section 8), and his family is a beneficiary of energy assistance programs like LIHEAP. He completed his undergraduate education at Saint Vincent College where he studied Engineering Science and Public Health and conducted research with a community health NGO in rural Guatemala that focused on high-impact household improvement projects (improved cookstoves and water filters).

Joseph researches pathways for residential decarbonization and their impacts on vulnerable communities. His work explores how home energy efficiency retrofits will affect equity, health, costs, and other sustainability outcomes in historically disinvested neighborhoods. By combining modeling methods, field experience from professional contractors, and community stakeholder engagement, Joseph aims to improve the quality of life for residents in affordable housing units and low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities. His recent study found that without incentives, LMI households were the least likely to conduct energy efficiency retrofits due to prohibitive upfront capital costs. However, the adoption of space heating, water heating, clothes drying, and cooking retrofits more than doubled among LMI homes with the distribution of Inflation Reduction Act rebates.

Host or Publisher CMU Scott Institute for Energy Innovation