For anyone wanting to read more about the need for and benefits of electrifying everything (the ones in the home being cars, clothes dryers, stove/oven, heating/cooling, water heaters, etc) check out https://rewiringamerica.org
They have a lot of technical details of how much carbon it would reduce, how many jobs it would create, how much it will cost, and how to do it on the time-scale necessary to stay below 2 degrees warming. It's really inspiring.
They want rooftop solar. Where I live the roof points in the wrong direction and solar would not work. It's also shaded by other homes and trees.
In large cities with apartments rooftop solar won't even come close to providing enough energy for all the apartments.
I will stick with my environmentally friendly gas dryer and oven, and will avoid the bad for the environment electric version of those.
Maybe when the last carbon and natural gas power plant shuts down I'll consider switching, until then switching to electric would harm the environment.
I think the idea is to replace gas appliances as they break with electric. Why? Buying electric replacements is an investment towards decarbonization: when that last gas electric plant shuts down your electric appliance is powered by solar/wind/nuclear “automatically”.
It seems like a pretty reasonable stance to take to decarbonize given the 15 yearish lifespan of most appliances and the urgency of the problem.
Modern electric appliances are often more efficient than burning fossil fuels. For example, the electric motors in cars are just inherently a lot more efficient than gas motors, not to mention less mechanically complicated, quieter, etc. (One of the reasons that electric cars today already have the lowest lifetime cost of ownership.)
At Rewiring America they found that electrifying all American cars, heating/cooling, appliances, etc would save 40-50% over fossil fuel equivalents just because of the inherent efficiency of electric machinery. This makes the problem of decarbonization 40-50% easier.
That makes no sense. For the entire life of the electric appliance you are emitting double or perhaps triple the carbon dioxide of the equivalent natural gas appliance.
First switch the electric grid to not use natural gas and only then think about changing appliances.
They have a lot of technical details of how much carbon it would reduce, how many jobs it would create, how much it will cost, and how to do it on the time-scale necessary to stay below 2 degrees warming. It's really inspiring.