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Empower Your Home: Electrifying your Appliances for a Greener Tomorrow
You don’t have to travel far to take climate action. In fact, you can take climate action from the comfort of your own home – by electrifying it.
By choosing electric alternatives for typical household appliances that deal with heating, cooling, and cooking, you can ditch fossil fuels in your home, and help create a more resilient and sustainable world.
Today, just over one-quarter of homes in the United States are fully electric. This means that nearly 75% of US homeowners rely on fuels other than electricity for everyday life.
To help solve the climate crisis, we need to ensure the transition toward 100% of American homes being electrified. Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides federal tax rebates and incentives, making it easier to electrify your home, and retail stores now offer a wide selection of electric appliances for purchase.
Taking climate action from Home
It may seem daunting to completely electrify your home, but the good news is that you can start small and electrify it appliance by appliance. With the IRA, American taxpayers can tap into $8,000 on individual home electrification purchases and up to $14,000 in total rebates to begin electrifying their homes. Items that qualify for energy-efficient home improvements include heat pumps, new circuit wiring, and many more!
If you don’t know where to start your home’s appliance electrification journey, here is our guide to some typical household appliances that can be replaced:
- Heating and cooling systems: A great way to make the switch from gas-powered heating and cooling systems in your home is to use heat pumps. A heat pump works by transferring heat from one space to another, providing both heating and cooling capabilities by utilizing the natural temperature differences in the environment. The IEA estimates that global heat pump implementation can have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 500 million tonnes in 2030 – which is equal to the annual CO2 emissions for all cars in Europe today.
- Cooking appliances: It’s increasingly common to see electric cooking appliances being offered in retail stores. These electric appliances not only help fight against climate change, but they offer health benefits as well. For instance, switching from a gas stove to an electric stove can reduce indoor air pollution and avoid harmful gasses such as nitrous dioxide, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde. Additionally, replacing a fossil fuel-powered stove with an electric stove won’t compromise your culinary endeavors since electric stoves offer quick heat-up times, fast water boiling, and the ability to stop producing heat.
- Laundry: According to the New York Times, American households typically do 300 loads of laundry every year, and one study points to America’s laundry’s carbon emissions being as high as 179 million tons a year — which is equivalent to 933 roundtrip flights from NYC to London! Unless your household has transitioned away from fossil fuels, the energy-intensive activities of heating water in the washing machine and operating the dryer can lead to a significant reliance on fossil fuel-supplied energy. You can reduce the energy footprint of your washer and dryer by choosing electric appliances such as electric water heaters and buying newer electric dryer machines that are much more energy efficient.
- Vehicle: While not fitting the conventional mold of a "household appliance," vehicles still play an important role in widespread electrification in the United States. Electric vehicles are unique because they are interconnected with your home’s energy system and can bring serious climate benefits and drastically cut your transportation costs. American taxpayers can qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 if they buy a new, qualified plug-in electric vehicle.
Electrifying your home with Solar Energy
Your home is important, and even the small choices you make to electrify it can bring reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that will help to solve the climate crisis.
When considering the overall energy mix of your home, we’d like to point out that you can always electrify it further by adding solar panels. With solar panels added to your home or property’s energy mix, it will help guarantee that your home’s appliances will run on carbon-free electricity while dramatically reducing your monthly electricity bills from the utility company.
If you’re interested in learning more about how your home can benefit from solar energy, check out our website to learn more.
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77 w
In most cases an electrified home should be cheaper as well, once you get past the installation costs. So if that can be paid or subsidized, it's a win win for everyone!
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77 w
75% seems like a crazy number! 🙀 Do you think there are enough incentives for people to change their appliances from gas/oil to electric?
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So interesting to learn about household appliances and their climate impact! I have an electric tea-kettle in my house, but I'm hoping we opt for more climate-friendly devices soon!