{"id":62742,"date":"2024-04-01T10:14:49","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T17:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=62742"},"modified":"2024-04-01T10:14:49","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T17:14:49","slug":"emission-impossible-heres-what-happened-when-two-climate-reporters-tried-to-ditch-natural-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/emission-impossible-heres-what-happened-when-two-climate-reporters-tried-to-ditch-natural-gas\/","title":{"rendered":"Emission Impossible: Here’s what happened when two climate reporters tried to ditch natural gas."},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist<\/a> on March 21, 2024.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Tik Root<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This story was produced by\u00a0Grist<\/a>\u00a0and co-published with\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My wife and I live in a green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in Burlington, Vermont. Each spring, the front of our home is lined with lilacs, crocuses, and peonies. The backyard is thick with towering black locust trees. We occasionally spot a fox from our office windows, or toddlers from the neighbourhood daycare trundling through the woods. It\u2019s an alarmingly idyllic home, with one exception: It runs on natural gas.<\/p>\n

The boiler, which heats our house and our water, burns it. So do the stove and the dryer and even the fireplace in the living room. Some\u00a060 per cent of American residences<\/a>\u00a0are similarly reliant on gas, the primary component of which is the potent greenhouse gas\u00a0methane<\/span>. This dependence on fossil fuels didn\u2019t particularly faze us in the past. When we had to replace the furnace in our last place in late 2018, it was the easiest option. Same for the other appliances. At least it wasn\u2019t oil, we told ourselves. It didn\u2019t help that our contractors weren\u2019t well-versed in alternatives and that our decisions were sometimes necessarily made in haste. When we did have time to explore switching to cleaner sources, the price tag often gave us pause. Can an induction stove really be\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0expensive?<\/p>\n

Five years later, the landscape had shifted. The world was\u00a0climbing dangerously toward 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit)<\/a>\u00a0of warming, and residential energy use accounted for one-sixth of all planet-heating emissions in the United States. We also wanted to start a family, and burning methane indoors can have potentially profound effects on human health. Then came the Inflation Reduction Act, which unleashed\u00a0billions of federal dollars<\/a>\u00a0to help make cleaner technologies more ubiquitous and affordable than ever before. By early last year, we were ready to decarbonize.<\/p>\n

I harboured no illusions that it would be the simple \u201cfive-step\u201d process<\/a>\u00a0some advocates imply it is. But, as climate journalists, my wife and I figured a few weeks\u2019 research and planning ought to get us most of the way there. What unfolded was more than a year of cascading decisions and obstacles that strained our wallets,\u00a0 tested our notions of comfort and sacrifice. While the late nights buried to my knuckles in spreadsheets calculating the payback periods on heat pumps and solar panels were, dare I say, fun, my nerves began to fray when the solar company we wanted to hire abruptly went out of business. They nearly broke when I saw what all of this would cost and shattered when I thought we\u2019d have to upgrade the electrical panel. My wife found her limit when we were forced to choose between cutting emissions or cutting trees.<\/p>\n

Frazzled and flustered, I sought help.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not surprised,\u201d David Lis with Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships said of my predicament. Once people discover that going electric is an option, most run headlong into the complexities. \u201cYour experience of having to navigate a lot of market actors is a big barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n

With each step, however, we became increasingly confident that\u00a0decarbonization<\/span>\u00a0was possible. The question quickly became whether we were willing to bear the cost.<\/p>\n

Every year, homes in the U.S. produce nearly 900 million metric tons<\/a>\u00a0of carbon dioxide. That\u2019s about twice as much as all of France. One-third of those emissions are the result of directly burning natural gas and other fossil fuels onsite. The remainder comes from generating the electricity residences consume.<\/p>\n

Our house is fairly typical. It was built in 1940, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and 1,672 square feet of living space. We combust about 65,000 cubic feet of gas each year keeping warm, cooking meals, and doing laundry, or about\u00a0the norm in the Northeast<\/a>. Going electric would shift those emissions to the cleanest grid in the country; almost\u00a0all of Vermont\u2019s electricity comes from renewable sources<\/a>. Those savings are why climate advocates often push people to \u201celectrify everything<\/a>.\u201d But doing that can, as we found out, become comically complicated.<\/p>\n

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Cristina Span\u00f2<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely important to have a plan going in,\u201d said Cora Wyent, director of research for the electrification nonprofit Rewiring America, which recently released a personal electrification planner<\/a> to help people plot their path to decarbonization. I reached Wyent about halfway through ours and wished I had found her sooner. Making a roadmap, she said, helps folks maximize incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, some of which can be redeemed multiple times because they reset annually. It also can help avoid unexpected, and often costly, electrical work to ensure your house can supply the needed power, said Wyent. \u201cMaking a plan can also help you stay within the limits of your electric panel.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As for what to prioritize, she says that depends on your motivation. If your goal is minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, for example, ditching fossil fuel heating would likely have the largest impact. Those concerned about indoor air quality might prefer to start with appliances (particularly stoves). If in doubt, electrifying whenever something breaks is often the simplest pathway to a lower-carbon home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it dies, electrify,\u201d quipped Wyent. That approach means paying only for things that need replacing anyway, and can split the unwieldy into smaller, more manageable projects. It\u2019s where we decided to start early last year when our water heater was aging to the point of hazard. Then we\u2019d turn to the stove and our heating system, in no particular order. The dryer was less urgent, but needed to go for us to disconnect the gas line. We also knew we wanted to get as much work done as possible while we were making other renovations, especially because we now had a baby on the way. We were in the fortunate position of having enough cash from the sale of our previous home that financing wasn\u2019t an immediate barrier, so long as we decided an investment was worth it.<\/p>\n

Our first foray into discarding gas was installing a heat pump water heater. It works a bit like an air conditioner in reverse by\u00a0drawing warmth from the surrounding air<\/a>\u00a0to bring water up to temperature, and\u00a0the technology is growing in popularity<\/a>. Not only are heat pumps energy-efficient, they also can do a bit of dehumidification, which our musty basement sorely needed. The process went deceptively smoothly.<\/p>\n

We gathered several quotes \u2014 something Wyent and others told me is critical to managing costs. The lowest was $2,825 to install a 50-gallon tank, a price that was on the\u00a0high end of Energy Star guidance<\/a>\u00a0but hundreds less than the others. A $600 instant rebate from the state and an $800 post-purchase one from the city brought the figure to $1,425. I happened to have a friend who needed one too, so we both got another $150 off for doing them together. The IRA provides a\u00a0tax credit of 30 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of the total cost (up to $2,000), though we won\u2019t get it until after we file our taxes.<\/p>\n

All told, the bill will come to $428, plus a couple hundred more to have an electrician wire it. Installation took less than a day and the water heater is now humming happily in our basement. Although the emissions savings will be negligible because we still need our boiler for space heating, it was a confident first stride toward reducing our dependence on gas.<\/p>\n

Buoyed by the success, we took aim at the stove and the dryer.<\/p>\n

Electrifying appliances isn\u2019t yet a major climate win. The average dryer uses around 2,000 cubic feet of natural gas a year<\/a>, with CO2 emissions roughly equivalent to driving about 300 miles. Gas stoves consume about the same amount. At best, going electric fully displaces those\u00a0greenhouse gases<\/span>. But the advantages are even smaller beyond Vermont, where local utilities aren\u2019t as clean. The nation still generates\u00a060 per cent of its electricity with fossil fuels<\/a> (43 per cent of it from natural gas) and until that changes, junking a gas stove is\u00a0roughly a wash for the planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our main motivation for jettisoning gas appliances was the blinking light on our air purifier. We\u2019d read the research showing that cooking\u00a0over gas produces<\/a>\u00a0benzene and nitrogen dioxide. But seeing that little diode change from a soft blue to a harsh red every time we cooked was a menacing reminder of the risks. It grew even more unsettling when we found out we\u2019d become parents, as gas stoves have been linked to nearly\u00a013 per cent of the nation\u2019s childhood asthma cases<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0consensus among climate experts and, perhaps equally importantly, chefs<\/a>\u00a0is that the best alternative is an induction stove, which uses electromagnetic energy to heat cookware. It requires less energy than a traditional electric range and offers greater temperature control. But as we started exploring options, we quickly realized the technology doesn\u2019t come cheap. The least expensive models start at around $1,100, or almost twice the price of a basic gas stove. Advocates of the tech say prices should come down as it becomes more widespread, but that didn\u2019t do us much good, and our city\u2019s rebate was just $200. We hoped Black Friday would further blunt the financial blow, though that meant waiting a few months. We used the time to weigh whether we wanted features such as a convection oven (we did) and, come November, headed to Lowe\u2019s.<\/p>\n