This is the first in a series of articles on electrifying our house so we can “stop burning stuff.”
Yes, we already have electricity, but we use fossil gas for heat, hot water, and cooking. That’s what we plan to electrify, eliminating fossil gas from our home.[1]
Our gas is provided by PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric Co.), our notorious utility company. Notorious because it killed eight people in San Bruno, California in a massive gas explosion in 2010 then they followed that up by killing another 85 people by starting the Camp Fire in 2018. In 2020 the company filed for bankruptcy, and since then they’ve been resuscitated. However, to its customers, it’s still the same old PG&E.
When environmental activists in California first began clamoring for a ban on gas hookups in new homes, I pooh-poohed the idea. I’ve been working in the environmental field my entire life. I’d always viewed fossil gas as relatively benign and certainly better for the environment than burning oil. Gas burns relatively cleanly in comparison. City buses here in Bakersfield sport placards announcing that they’re powered by “clean natural gas” rather than diesel fuel.
Turns out I’d been hoodwinked along with everyone else. As I dug into it a little deeper I found that gas wasn’t as good as I once thought.
Methane, the key constituent of fossil gas, is a potent contributor to global warming—it’s 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Mining and transporting fossil gas contributes significant amounts of methane leakage to the atmosphere. We’ve had cases of unplugged gas wells leaking here in Bakersfield–the oil capital of California—potentially affecting the health of nearby neighbors. EPA dubbed the January 2025 cases “super emission events.” Of course burning it is no good either. Recent studies have shown that using fossil gas for cooking contributes to indoor air pollution.
All of it’s unnecessary. We have a cleaner, greener, and a cheaper alternative: electricity. It’s cleaner and greener in California because we use so much wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal energy. And our grid is getting progressively greener as we add more renewables every year. It’s potentially cheaper relative to gas because of new, more energy efficient electric appliances than the gas counterparts they are replacing. I say potentially cheaper, because I don’t know for sure yet. I plan to track their performance and cost as I’ve done for our use of an electric car for the past decade. (See A Decade of Driving Electric—EVs Have Come a Long Ways Baby.)
If we’re serious about tackling climate change, we have to stop burning stuff. We have to strike both oil and gas from our economy. We can do our part by cutting our use of oil by driving electric. We can also cut the need for mining and transporting fossil gas by switching our home appliances to electricity. And that’s what we plan to do.
We’ve been driving an EV for a decade now. Been there, done that. It’s time for us to take on the seemingly daunting task of eliminating fossil gas from our home by switching our space heating, water heating, and cooking to electricity.
[1] Fossil gas was formerly called “natural” gas to distinguish it from “town” gas that was created by burning coal in a reducing atmosphere. The “natural” in natural gas was used because the gas came from the earth. It was natural and not man made. However, with time the word “natural” has taken on new, expanded meanings to include healthy Fossil gas if anything it isn’t “healthy,” and we haven’t manufactured “town” gas in a century or more. Thus, it’s more appropriate today to call gas mined from the earth as “fossil” gas because it is a fossil fuel like petroleum.
