This story was produced by Grist and co-published with The Guardian. 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 neighborhood daycare trundling through the woods. It’s an alarmingly idyllic home, with one exception: It runs on natural gas. 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 60 percent of American residences are similarly reliant on gas, the primary component of which is the potent greenhouse gas methane.
This dependence on fossil fuels didn’t 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’t oil, we told ourselves. It didn’t help that our contractors weren’t 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 that expensive?
Five years later, the landscape had shifted. The world was climbing dangerously toward 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of 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 billions of federal dollars to help make cleaner technologies more ubiquitous and affordable than ever before. By early last year, we were ready to decarbonize.
However, this process was not as straightforward as we initially thought. It turned into more than a year of cascading decisions and obstacles that strained our wallets and tested our notions of comfort and sacrifice. While researching alternatives, we encountered complexities and unexpected costs that made us question our initial assumptions.
With each step, we became increasingly confident that decarbonization was possible. The question quickly became whether we were willing to bear the cost. Every year, homes in the U.S. produce nearly 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s 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.
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 the norm in the Northeast. Going electric would shift those emissions to the cleanest grid in the country; almost all of Vermont’s electricity comes from renewable sources.
We then focused on electrifying our home by starting with the installation of a heat pump water heater. It works efficiently by drawing warmth from the surrounding air to heat water, and is a popular choice for energy-conscious homeowners. We gathered multiple quotes, took advantage of available rebates, and made use of tax credits to help offset the cost. The installation went smoothly and the water heater is now running efficiently in our basement.
Buoyed by this success, we moved on to electrifying our stove and dryer. While the climate impact of these changes may be limited, our main motivation was the health benefits and reducing our reliance on gas. Our journey towards decarbonization continues as we make strides towards a cleaner, more sustainable home.
