Electrification: How to Remove Natural Gas From Your Home

Electrification is the process of converting all of a home's heating, cooling, and appliances to electricity. Often this means removing natural gas from the house. Using natural gas in our homes harms our family's health and generates harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading if your home uses any type of gas or you're thinking about turning off the taps.

The same goes for gas lines in any home, especially in earthquake-prone areas. Gas leaks are all too common to ignore. 

This may surprise homeowners from Texas, California, and Florida, where natural gas is everywhere. But all-electric homes are widespread in many places worldwide, including this home on the East Coast of Canada.

Grid-connected homes are considered “all-electric” even if their grids are powered by coal or fossil fuels. Some all-electric homes generate their power with solar, wind, or micro-hydro to reduce their reliance on the grid, and some even generate so much that they sell it back to the grid.

This might be a deal-breaker for the average homeowner, but perhaps not for homeowners who understand the advantages of energy-efficient electric appliances and renewable energies.

Current natural gas prices will not last. As natural gas becomes more scarce, we'll see the cost of extraction, and thus the unit cost for consumers, rise. We're already seeing market factors causing rises in gasoline prices. Fossil fuel companies know the renewable energy wave is here to stay, and they're going to extract as much value from consumers as possible before we've transitioned away from fossil fuels altogether.

Energy Efficient Appliances and Devices

The future is electric. Today’s most energy-efficient appliances are all-electric, and this will improve as we see more technology breakthroughs. Induction cooktops are 90% efficient, compared to just 40% efficiency for gas. Under ideal conditions, air-to-air heat pumps for heating and cooling are 300% efficient compared to 95% efficiency for the best gas furnace. And for water heaters, efficient models return over $2 for every dollar spent on energy, while gas heaters return only 67 cents.

Even though natural gas is cheaper per BTU than electricity, homeowners with energy-efficient electric appliances will see these monthly savings on their power bills and even more in the coming years.

Taking Advantage of Renewable Energies

Whether it's your goal to live off the land or reduce energy bills, renewable energy runs electric appliances - not gas appliances.

"The Solar Ready Home" is a term to remember if you like the idea of moving to solar energy but are waiting until it makes more sense financially. A solar-ready home is an all-electric home that is energy-efficient to reduce the size of the solar panel array you'll need.

The Possibility of Moving Toward Net-Zero Emissions

Burning fossil fuels at home accounts for 13% of the United States' total greenhouse gas emissions, while burning fossil fuels for energy production is a whopping 25%. For the world to reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, our homes and grids need a substantial overhaul.

An all-electric home is not only more efficient and emission-friendly in the short term, but it prepares your home to be net-zero-emissions when our grids transition to cleaner sources of energy in the future. And for the serious home sustainability fans, electrification is a necessary step toward achieving official status as a "zero energy" home, "net-zero energy" home, or a "zero energy ready" home.