Busting Myths about Home Electrification

‍In Part 2 of our interview with Cooper Marcus, we explore common misconceptions of home electrification, what to do with leaky, drafty homes, and how to manage the confusing landscape of rebates and tax credits. We finish with an ode to contractors who are critical stakeholders in home electrification.

David Tuft: What are some of the common misconceptions that people come to QuitCarbon with?

Cooper Marcus: On Facebook, we see lots of comments that fall into three major categories. The first is: electricity is expensive. There is a perception that electric solutions are expensive and electricity itself is expensive. That might have been the case in the past, heating your home with an old-fashioned resistance heater the kind that glows red hot. 

But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about heat pumps. They use a quarter of the electricity to produce the same heat. They are not expensive when you do the math correctly, which is what we do on behalf of our clients. 

When you buy a heat pump, you're buying it for the long term. When you compare that to the cost of replacing your gas furnace and fueling it with gas for the next 20 years, you discover that electricity is not expensive. Not at all. It's a lot cheaper.

The second misconception is that electricity isn't clean. People believe that electricity comes from dirty power plants, and when you switch from burning fossil fuel in your home to using electricity, you're making more pollution. That could not be farther from the truth. Our electricity supply, especially here in California, and increasingly everywhere in the United States, is getting cleaner all the time. There's no way to make burning fossil fuel cleaner. It produces NOx. There's nothing you could do about that.

But electricity is increasingly made with zero-carbon production sources, like solar power, hydropower, and even nuclear power. No matter what you think about nuclear, it does not impact the climate. Our homes in California are a much larger source of climate pollution than electricity generation, but virtually nobody knows that. They think that electricity is dirty. So that's the second misperception.

The third misconception is that electricity is unreliable. People think that there are many more power outages than there actually are. And they imagine electric appliances are the only ones that are affected by power outages when they do occur. Many gas appliances depend on electricity. If you have a gas furnace, a forced air furnace, it will not heat your home if it has no electricity. It needs electricity and gas. The electricity runs a fan. Many other home appliances are like this. Some gas water heaters require electricity, some gas stoves require electricity. It's just not the case that electricity is unreliable and that gas appliances are inherently more reliable.

And an important point: Utilities are moving away from gas. They are putting all of their future investments into the electricity system. That means electricity is getting more reliable. And also if you really care, and you really believe that your electricity is unreliable, you've got an option. You can get a home battery. You can get solar. You can add a directional charger and use the electricity that's in your electric vehicle in your home. You cannot drill your own oil well. You cannot make your own gas, but you can produce your own electrons. 

[Lightly edited for length and clarity]

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