In September, 2021, Susan Millar of Madison, Wisconsin, called her utility company.
“And I said, ‘Would you please turn off my gas?’ And they were like, ‘Well, are you moving?’ And I was like, ‘No, I just am not going to be using gas anymore,’” she recalls.
She says she’d converted her 90-year-old home to run entirely on electricity instead of natural gas.
Her commitment to going all electric started after she installed rooftop solar panels and learned that they were generating more electricity than she was using.
But she still had a stove, water heater, and furnace that ran on gas. So she swapped out her gas range for an electric induction stovetop. And she replaced her water heater and furnace with electric heat pump systems.
Burning natural gas creates climate-warming pollution. So whether a homeowner has solar or not, she says going electric helps move the country toward an energy system that depends less on fossil fuels.
And the climate benefits will grow as utilities add more renewable electricity to the grid.
“The sooner we, as consumers … stop using fossil-burning devices and start using only electric devices,” Millar says, “then that’s going to help drive that big shift away from the fossil fuel industry.”
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media