This story was originally published byGrist.
This story was produced byGristand co-published withThe Guardian.
Each spring, the front of our home is lined with lilacs, crocuses, and peonies.
Our home’s attic ducts, as photographed by our contractor.Photo: Phillip Martin/Grist
The backyard is thick with towering black locust trees.
Its an alarmingly idyllic home, with one exception: It runs on natural gas.
The boiler, which heats our house and our water, burns it.
Our basement, with a boiler and old water heaterPhoto: Tik Root/Grist
So do the stove and the dryer and even the fireplace in the living room.
This dependence on fossil fuels didnt particularly faze us in the past.
Same for the other appliances.
Our contractor suggested we install three condensers, one for each floor, and ductwork in the attic to reach the upstairs bedrooms.Photo: Phillip Martin/Grist
At least it wasnt oil, we told ourselves.
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.
By early last year, we were ready to decarbonize.
Read Next:He wanted to get his home off fossil fuels.
There was just one problem.
I harbored no illusions that it would be thesimple five-step processsome advocates imply it is.
My wife found her limit when we were forced to choose between cutting emissions or cutting trees.
Frazzled and flustered, I sought help.
Im not surprised, 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.
Your experience of having to navigate a lot of market actors is a big barrier.
With each step, however, 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 nearly900 million metric tonsof carbon dioxide.
Thats 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.
Those savings are why climate advocates often push people to electrify everything.
But doing that can, as we found out, become comically complicated.
I reached Wyent about halfway through ours and wished I had found her sooner.
Making a plan can also help you stay within the limits of your electric panel.
As for what to prioritize, she says that depends on your motivation.
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.
When it dies, electrify, quipped Wyent.
Then wed 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.
Our first foray into discarding gas was installing a heat pump water heater.
The process went deceptively smoothly.
We gathered several quotes something Wyent and others told me is critical to managing costs.
Installation took less than a day and the water heater is now humming happily in our basement.
Buoyed by the success, we took aim at the stove and the dryer.
Electrifying appliances isnt yet a major climate win.
Gas stoves consume about the same amount.
At best, going electric fully displaces those greenhouse gases.
But the advantages are even smaller beyond Vermont, where local utilities arent as clean.
Our main motivation for jettisoning gas appliances was the blinking light on our air purifier.
Wed read the research showing that cookingover gas producesbenzene and nitrogen dioxide.
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 doesnt come cheap.
We hoped Black Friday would further blunt the financial blow, though that meant waiting a few months.
Given my proclivity for buying power tools I dont need, my wife hustled me directly to the appliances.
Alas, the store had just one induction model on display, and it wasnt the one we wanted.
The list price was $2,249, but we got it for nearly half off with the holiday sale.
Leaving the store, I nearly blew our savings on a track saw.
Good job I showed restraint, as installing outlets to power our purchases was much more expensive than expected.
Although thats about two-thirds the cost of appliances, we saw the benefits of ditching gas almost immediately.
My wife does most of the cooking and swoons when she switches on an induction burner.
Water boils far faster than with the gas stove and even more quickly than in our electric kettle.
It feels almost instant, she said.
The bubbles are crazy.
Best of all, its been months since weve seen the red light on our air purifier.
With the relatively small stuff tackled, that left our biggest energy glutton: the heating system.
That carbon footprint would largely disappear if we went electric.
We started with a home energy audit to ensure we didnt have any major weatherization issues to fix.
That sounds great until you realize that heat pumps can be two to five times more efficient.
They come in two basic flavors.
Air-source models instead utilize ambient air as their source.
Geothermal systems are more efficient, quieter, and last longer than their air-source counterparts.
Because subterranean temperatures remain relatively constant, the weather also doesnt affect how they operate.
The efficiency is fantastic.
It largely drove our decision as well.
(Not that any of the geothermal installers I called were particularly convincing.
A couple outright told me I shouldnt do it.)
Because our house currently has baseboard heaters rather than ducts, we gravitated toward a mini split system.
The first contractor we spoke with suggested stationing two condensers outside and five heads throughout the house.
He recommended systems designed specifically for colder climates,which are guaranteed to operate at temperatures well below zero.
That guy never followed up with a quote, though.
The next bid came in at $25,950, which felt high.
We gathered two more estimates, the lowest of which landed at $19,637.
But there was a hitch: We heard that heat pumps could drive our electricity bills to untenable levels.
That would make heat pumps too expensive to operate.
As we pondered how to make heat pumps affordable, the sun came to mind.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, 7 percent of homes nationwide now sport photovoltaic panels.
We hoped that becoming one of them could help lower our energy costs.
We asked our neighbors who installed their system, and a lovely salesman came by to prepare an estimate.
That sent me back to the phone to seek even more quotes, this time from roofers.
The best of them came in at $10,000.
Yet another project and expense, but an unavoidable one if we wanted solar.
(The myth is persistent enough that everyonefrom solar companiestoReddit usersare posting about it.)
A technician arrived on a dull gray morning in early December.
Did we meet all the roof set back requirements?
Are our rafters strong enough to support panels?
How much shade is there?
The answers to these questions and others could affect how much energy we could expect our array to generate.
The results would lead to one of the toughest decisions in our journey.
Black locusts start to leaf out each spring and become bushy caricatures of a tree within weeks.
Moreover, my wife would just as soon lose a limb of her own than needlessly fell a tree.
The black locusts would stay put.
My spreadsheet, named HOME DECARBONIZATION in all caps, is a mere three tabs across.
Despite its meager size, it took hours to build.
But even for homeowners ready to take larger steps, the process can entail a lot of hand-wringing.
More guides would certainly be helpful, said Wyent.
I turned to my spreadsheet to help maneuver the maze.
Although only putting panels on the front was tempting, installation costs wouldnt drop proportionally.
Certain design, permitting, wiring, and other outlays are largely fixed, making each panel successively cheaper.
Doing just the front system would raise that figure to $0.142.
We may also explore community solar, which allows individuals to invest in larger projects.
Youre in a particularly unfavorable area for rooftop solar to net out economically, Wyent said.
The investment makes sense on financial merit alone.
And we remained optimistic about heat pumps.
But that math was a bit more complex, so we turned to Efficiency Vermont for help.
The ideal ratio for air-source heat pumps is one outdoor unit for every indoor unit, Sharpe explained.
This ensures that the system is running steadily, rather than in short, inefficient spurts.
Beyond being tidier, it would consume 30 percent less energy than the initial proposal.
This would bring the operating costs of heat pumps to about the same as the gas boiler.
And, in the long-run, it would likely lead to savings, several experts told me.
Still, there is little chance well recoup our $15,000 investment in heat pumps on operating costs alone.
(We plan to keep the baseboard heaters on the first floor awhile longer for that reason.)
That would be an outlay we could sidestep.
Removing the one-time expenses brings the price tag of our heat pumps to around $10,000.
But because it could last another decade or two, that reasoning is largely moot.
From a climate perspective, though, getting rid of gas is a bonanza.
The heat pump is the biggest emissions saver in your home, said Wyent.
Over a 15-year lifespan, ours could eliminate about 54 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Ultimately, we signed the paperwork.
Bad news, I recall him saying.
The terror very nearly caused me to cancel the whole project.
Amid my panic, I called Sharpe at Efficiency Vermont, who eased my worries.
(We typically charge our plug-in hybrid overnight.)
It would be just $750 to install one.
His first job was to launch the ductwork in the attic and cut vent holes in the ceilings.
We scheduled the work for while we were out of town and out of his way.
We came home in time for the final wiring.
I dont know whos more excited, me or you, Martin said as he programmed the thermostat.
With a rush of warm air, our heat pumps whirred to life.
That night, the soft hum of a fan replaced the clanking of our baseboard system.
Removing them meant we could finally set up our baby nursery.
And, with every cathartic heave, we weaned ourselves off natural gas.
When we were done, I switched the boiler off.
Then came a call I didnt expect so soon.
Our neighbor had seen Martins truck in our driveway and wanted to hire him.
Within weeks, she had heat pumps too.
My father says hes next.
This article originally appeared inGristathttps://grist.org/buildings/electrify-home-improvement-decarbonize-solar-induction-heat-pump/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
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