Originally established as a working group of Sustainable Claremont, the Claremont Home Energy Retrofit Project (CHERP) grew by leaps and bounds and quickly became its own non-profit. More recently, CHERP expanded statewide, changing its name to “Community Home Energy Retrofit Project”.
Working in partnership with the City of Claremont and other nonprofit groups, CHERP met its original goal of helping 1% of Claremont homeowners (approximately 130 homes) make energy-efficiency improvements to their homes by 2013. As of 2019, CHERP has retrofitted over 400 homes, helped homeowners obtain more than $1,ooo,ooo in rebates, and mitigate over 600 metric tons of carbon.
From the CHERP website:
“CHERP … was created to eliminate the barriers to success of our critical, national, energy efficiency goals. CHERP is engaged in a comprehensive, replicable, community-wide program to help achieve aggressive goals for improved energy efficiency in buildings through education about the impact of buildings on greenhouse gas emissions and the many benefits that accrue to building owners and cities from retrofitting buildings. This program has now developed into an unprecedented community-based, state-wide collaborative effort by practicing the motto of “radical inclusion” and uniting as many homeowners, businesses, community organizations, and city governments as possible in the laser-sharp goal of retrofitting buildings on a massive scale. Our program unites young and old, professional and amateur, student and professor, public and private organizations around our desire to effect significant, immediate, and positive change in our communities and the environment. And we believe that ‘Energy is at the Heart of the Matter’.”
CHERP’s latest venture is “CHERP Locally Grown Power”, which is “creating a replicable, non-profit, solar panel assembly factory that is uniting physicists, economists, City Hall, local businesses, and hundreds of local volunteers, to bring back middle-class manufacturing jobs and cut green-house gasses on a massive scale.”