Electrifying News!
lightning bolt | Dawid Cedler | Flickr
I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about electrifying — that is, building an all-electric new home or eliminating natural gas and propane appliances in their existing homes. That’s something I plan to do myself any day now!
Meanwhile, for those building new or buying new appliances, I encourage choosing electric options. In case you’re not already of the same mind, here are my reasons:
1. I live in California, where we are rapidly moving towards cleaner and cleaner electricity production. Already 30% of our electricity is “clean,” i.e., produced by renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and photovoltaics, and Governor Brown recently signed legislation committing us to a 100% clean electric grid by 2045. Many other states will inevitably follow suit.
2. The International Panel on Climate Change has told us we have 12 years to throttle back fossil fuel emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change — but have you noticed that each time the IPCC reports, that time window gets smaller? I mean, smaller by more than the time elapsed since their preceding report! That means we probably REALLY have 5-10 years to cut emissions. Drastically.
3. Gas combustion in buildings is a very, very large fraction of our overall societal emissions. This is a part of the equation that as individuals we have the ability to change.
The single biggest objection raised to going all-electric is, “I can’t stand cooking on an electric range.” Here’s the good news: cooking on today’s magnetic induction ranges, although they do plug in, is otherwise a dramatic improvement over not only old-style electric cooking, but also over residential gas stoves. Everyone I know who has switched says they will never go back. I can’t wait to switch for the easier cleanup alone!!
Here are a couple of recent articles about induction cooking for your reading pleasure:
GO ELECTRIC!
