The Green Warriors Project weatherized seven homes in the two lowest-income zip codes in Dallas, Texas (75210 and 75215), where most households spend 40–60% of their income on housing, don’t qualify for loans to make home improvements, and are often unaware that weatherization assistance exists. Partnering with the City of Dallas Office of Environmental Quality & Sustainability and Southern Dallas Progress CDC, the project paired hands-on retrofits — attic insulation, air sealing, and LED lighting, at roughly $3,750 per home — with pre- and post-intervention data collection (utility bills, smart meter monitoring, and weather-normalized analysis) to build the evidence base the City needs to fund a full-scale program.
Two years of data show the model works: energy use fell 10% on average across the seven homes (7.3% excluding two outlier homes with irregular occupancy), with the best-performing home cutting usage 13.4% and paying back its retrofit cost in under five years. Some residents used more electricity than before in a given season — a “rebound effect” that reflects them finally running air conditioning or heat they’d previously avoided to save money, not wasted energy. Alongside the retrofits, the project trained local residents as a certified clean-energy workforce, in partnership with Green Careers Texas and St. Philip’s School & Community Center, building a pipeline of skilled labor that stays in the community it serves. It’s a working example of the SEAR Lab’s broader mission: building the physical, digital, and institutional infrastructure of the future, one household at a time.
Report available upon request.
Press:
Cleary, L. (2026, July 10). Weatherization pilot cuts energy use in aging South Dallas homes [Television news segment and online article]. WFAA-TV (ABC), Dallas, TX. https://www.wfaa.com/article/weather/weatherization-pilot-cuts-energy-use-aging-south-dallas-homes/287-d99644ba-97dc-4314-ae2d-aa6f46f76fe3
Jones, A. (2026, June 24). Could a few changes save hundreds in electricity for South Dallas residents in the summer? The Dallas Morning News. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/article/south-dallas-save-energy-summer-changes-22296006.php
WFAA. (2026, July 10). How a weatherization pilot cuts energy use in aging South Dallas homes [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUN6AbwdaMI