Building Electrification: How Homes Should Prepare for a Green Future
As the movement away from fossil fuels and toward a greener future continues to build momentum, our buildings have become a focal point for the energy transition.
The current popular strategy for decarbonizing buildings is through electrification, which is the shift away from fossil-based appliances and heating systems to those powered exclusively by electricity.
Illinois Institute of Technology faculty and colleagues are taking an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the impacts that widespread building electrification is likely to have on greenhouse gas emissions, indoor and outdoor air quality, human health, and economic costs. They are also trying to better understand factors that affect public acceptability of building electrification.
Arthur W. Hill Endowed Chair in Sustainability Brent Stephens, Professor of Political Science Matthew Shapiro, and Associate Professor of Architectural Engineering Mohammad Heidarinejad have teamed up with Professor Amy (Tianyuan) Li of the University of Waterloo in Canada to publish “Ten Questions Concerning Building Electrification,” which outlines key questions that should be answered as North Americans consider widespread adoption of electricity in their buildings in lieu of natural gas or other fossil fuels.
Most of the existing research predicts that electrifying buildings will lower greenhouse gas emissions and costs but are typically limited to a small number of geographic regions and building types. The effects are not likely to be linear or uniform, as some studies have found that a rapid transition to all-electric buildings could initially increase greenhouse gas emissions and costs in some locations, while emissions could immediately decrease in other locations. Innovations in heat pumps, electrical storage, and renewable energy sources should go hand-in-hand with building electrification, as the shift away from fossil fuels puts more strain on electrical grids.
Energy use is only a portion of a building’s lifelong environmental footprint. Efforts to account for the impact of building electrification on the environment must also employ life cycle assessment to assess the impact of buildings and systems on habitat destruction, resource depletion, and toxic emissions. Most assessments fail to account for all of these aspects or have done so in unrealistic and limited ways.
The research is more consistent in terms of the impacts on indoor air quality, which in turn affects human health. Americans spend nearly 90 percent of their time indoors, and about 70 percent in their homes, highlighting the importance of indoor air quality. Harmful pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde routinely exceed health-based standards in homes with gas appliances, such as gas stoves, especially without proper venting hoods. Building electrification is expected to reduce gas-phase pollutants from the combustion process. However, because cooking practices are the biggest factor in particulate matter emissions from stoves, the differences in fine particulate matter generated by gas or electric stoves may be small.
Public opinion about these types of lifestyle changes is also a factor, as people hold strong opinions about fuel choices in their homes, especially around cooking fuels. Recent studies have shown that people’s willingness to adopt building electrification for heating varies widely across geographic regions. When the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission suggested the possibility of banning gas stoves over climate and indoor air quality concerns, the agency received more than 9,000 comments both for and against the idea of a ban.
Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer for upfront costs of electrification to justify possible long-term savings. High-performance heat pumps can cost up to four times more than a typical gas furnace, though a heat pump can replace both central air conditioning and heating and could be a few times more efficient than fossil-based heating systems. The research team is confident that rising gas prices and lower electrification building costs will offset future costs.
The choice falls on the homeowner, and the decision to electrify a home often depends on location, income level, and knowledge about energy-saving appliances. And, as the study suggests, make the transition equitable for the entire population.
