Have you been hearing about whole-home electrification or the all-electric house? The concept of only using electricity to keep your home comfortable, safe, and healthy may seem counterintuitive to the idea of saving energy and reducing your carbon footprint.
However, the all-electric home is making its way into the carbon-reducing plans of municipalities all over the country, including those in Massachusetts and California. Here’s what you need to know about the negative effects of relying on fossil fuels, as well as the benefits of utilizing clean electricity in your home.
Reduce Carbon Emissions in Your Home
By switching your heating, cooling, water heating, laundry, and cooking appliances to all-electric power sources, you are eliminating any carbon emissions from your home. Electrification also reduces the demand for fossil fuel energy sources like natural gas, heating oil, and propane. This alone reduces your environmental impact, which is good for the planet, and good for your health.
A large multi-university study in 2018 found that nearly one in five deaths were caused by exposure to particulate matter from fossil fuel emissions. The greenhouse gases from fossil fuels end up trapped in the atmosphere, which is attributed to causing the earth’s climate to change, but there are also tiny particles from fossil fuels that end up in our breathing air and can penetrate vulnerable areas of the lungs. This can greatly increase the risk of:
- Lung cancer
- Coronary heart disease
- Stroke
The faster we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, the healthier we (and our planet) will become.
An All-Electric Home Should Be More Efficient
When electrification is done correctly, an all-electric home should require less total energy than your other combustion-based appliances. This results in similar (if not lower) energy bills, and an eliminated natural gas, propane, or oil bill. Modern heating and cooling technology, like mini split heat pumps, as well as high-tech cooking appliances like induction stoves only use a fraction of the energy of more traditional appliances. Heat pump technology can also be used in heat pump water heaters and heat pump clothes dryers, meaning you don’t have to sacrifice the comforts of home to go all-electric.
Plus, when you trust a qualified home health and home performance expert with tackling your home electrification process, like the BPI certified Healthy Home Evaluators at Healthy Home Energy & Consulting, we can help you make the home improvements that will improve the overall efficiency of your home, first. That way, you are reducing the energy loss in your home before utilizing ultra-efficient appliances to keep your home comfortable and healthy.
More Electric Appliances = More Safety
Combustion appliances give off a harmful byproduct—carbon monoxide. Even at very low levels, carbon monoxide exposure can cause unwanted health effects like headaches and nausea. In a home with no combustion appliances, there is a negligible risk of carbon monoxide exposure, if any at all, and with no more gas lines piped into your living space, there is no risk of an unfortunate gas explosion like the one that rocked this Massachusetts neighborhood in 2019.
Make A Plan for Electrifying your Home!
Switching to all-electric appliances isn’t something you need to do overnight. Starting with a Healthy Home Evaluation, the team at Healthy Home Energy & Consulting will work with you on a residential electrification plan, one step at a time. Using the data we collect from your Healthy Home Evaluation, we will start with the upgrades that will have the greatest impact on your overall comfort, efficiency, and health, so you can rest easy knowing your home improvement project will be catered to your exact needs.
Ready for the upgraded control and efficiency that comes with electrifying your home? Schedule your healthy home evaluation with our team by calling 914-242-9733 or get in touch here.
