Why Electricity Is Better Than Natural Gas In Your Home

The climate piece was critical, but the fact that I was burning fossil fuel in my kitchen.
They're peer-reviewed studies saying burning gas in your stove - you will cause the air quality in your kitchen to violate federal health-based air quality standards in your kitchen, where you cook, and it's one of those sacred things you do with your family, it was like this is crazy! It turns out there are over 12million homes and buildings in the state of California that use gas. These homeowners wanted to help change that. Let's take a peek inside this Oakland California home. My name is Juliette, and my parent's names are Bruce and Bonnie, and my brother's name is Ian. I'm Bonnie Cosgrove. And I'm Bruce Nilles. And this is our house. It's an all-electric emission-free house. So where do we live? So we live in Oakland, California. We're about what two miles from the Bay, and we're about two miles from the Redwoods, so we live in a pretty awesome place where we can go hang out at the beach,  we can go walking in the Redwoods.

We burn a lot of gas in our homes, in our gas water heater, gas furnace, gas stove, gas dryer,r. There's both substantial health impacts and huge climate impacts associated with burning gas. So the renovation project that we did over the last nine months, was that we started with, was getting all the gas appliances replaced with clean, efficient electric appliances. And we did that one first because there are immediate health benefits of not burning gas in your kitchen and other parts of your house, so we're excited. We think it's made a noticeable difference, and was a fascinating project to get the gas appliances out and go through the permitting process,  working with contractors, and getting to a place where we were able to shut the gas off two months ago. But it was interesting, a friend of ours said to try a hot plate. Buy an induction hot plate, and we have one stuck in the closet now and put it on this counter, and we tried it, and it was like wow!

It is super fast, and boy it's also super responsive, so that was a gateway. That was the thing that I think helped us work out that electric is better and it doesn't have any pollution. Yeah, I mean my last experience cooking on an electric range was on my college cooktop, and it wasn't great. So, as someone who enjoys cooking and I cook most nights for the family, that was a hard sell to get rid of gas which I knew was responsive and it had a lot of power. But using the hot plate was an eye-opening experience because it was so responsive and so fast. And this range is even better, so I have no complaints and am a convert. So what have we done in this house? Taken all the gas out, that's right. And what did we put upon the roof? Solar panels! The solar panels get the power from the Sun. And where does that power then go? What do we do with it? We use it! For what? For exciting things that we have to charge, like phones and computers. Phones and networks, and hot water, and the furnace, and the stove, and the car and the dryer. Everything in our house is electric. And did we get a new car? Yes. And what's cool about it? That I can ride in the back! It has jump seats in the end, so it's a seven-seater. And what else is cool about it? It's all-electric. Our solar panels power us.

The sunroof yes, that was pretty cool too. These are steps that we've been able to take that have that addressed some of the more essential things that are within our control. So as we can take those, you know, they're baby steps I guess, but to make the housework better and feel better and just day to day feel like it's, you know, we're making responsible choices where we can. Right. Working down the list, what are the most significant footprints, what are the biggest impacts we're having:  so there was putting on solar. Switching our car to an all-electric, and now getting rid of gas. Those are three the most significant impacts in most people's lives, so it's not everything yet. There's more we can do, but those are three of the big ones so it's an excellent place to get started and it feels good to be doing our part to minimize our carbon footprint. For the folks who are saying I'm not sure I can solve a global problem,  I think my answer is well at least ensure the air in your home is safe to breathe. And secondly, if we all work together, we can solve global problems, that's the only thing that ever has. What's the favourite thing to charge with the solar panels? TV.

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