Comparing Our Home’s Energy Use To An All-Electric Neighbor
What if the comparisons are real?
I first got an inkling that there was something we could do about climate change after receiving monthly utility bills with disturbing charts comparing our home's energy use to our neighbors. Like most, I took to ignoring these figures, thinking that these neighbors were just mythical people, paper ghosts, that couldn’t exist in real life.
Recently, on an evening out at Manning's, our local casual burger joint known for its exceptional fries and the conviviality of friends, Mark, a member of our circle, informed us that there was something we could do about climate change. By electrifying his home, his family reduced their energy use by two-thirds.
Our round table at Manning's, already circled by skepticism, became a hub of debate. Aaron, Antonio, Derk, Jonathan, Michael, Rob, Sergei, all of them, at various points, raised their chicken wings to voice objections or make a point.
The big question was whether an electric heat pump was really able to work in our cold Minnesota climate. Mark explained how it had a backup system, a heating strip - "like on a toaster" - inside the air handler. If the temperature drops below a certain prescribed setting (some units go to -15 F), the less efficient auxiliary heat kicks in.
Considering that his home’s purchased electricity comes from Xcel Energy of Minnesota, where up to 50% of power sold to consumers comes from renewables like wind, and his onsite solar contributes back to the grid, he's not just cutting down on energy use; he's actively supporting the transition to more environmentally sustainable sources of power.
His family kicked fossil fuels. Best of all, their story isn't an outlier; it could be a template for all of us to follow.
Before we go there, let's look back to another transition time in home energy use, the turn of the 20th century. Around this time, Dave Lennox of Marshalltown, Iowa is widely remembered for his contributions to the evolution of his company’s coal gravity-fed furnaces, who, as legend has it, he took to demonstrating their durability by jumping up and down on one in front of startled customers.
But I think it’s more important to highlight Alice H. Parker, an African-American woman from Morristown, New Jersey, who revolutionized home heating, and whose story seldom got the recognition it deserves. It was her innovative patent, awarded in 1919 for the first natural gas furnace designed for homes, that demonstrated how heat could be transferred from an exchanger and controlled and distributed through a system of ducts throughout the home. Her invention helped lay the groundwork for the widespread use of natural gas, modern central heating systems, zone heating, thermostats, forced air, and it forever changed how we came to more efficiently and safely warm our homes and stop using coal.
What struck me most about Alice Parker was that she grew up in the same area I did, albeit two generations before. Her patent precedes both the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Liberation Movement. Her journey couldn't have been easy, but her determination and ingenuity enabled her to see her invention through.
Now that we are in the midst of another energy transition, this time away from fossil fuels, let's move back to the story at hand.
I knew that Mark’s wife, Rhona, ran marathons, and Mark cheered her on. Maybe that has something to do with their ability to see their home renovation and electrification project through to completion.
My next meeting with Mark was at a local bakery. The conversation naturally gravitated towards his motivations. I learned that their journey was spurred not just by a general concern for the environment, but their immediate, tangible experience – not much different than mine - the feeling that we had to do something about the wildfire smoke that had been engulfing our neighborhood from California and Canada.
He recounted the days when the air outside was thick with fog and smoke from distant wildfires. The crisis had literally arrived at his doorstep, compelling him to seal his home from the polluted air. One time this coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, trapping him in what became an uncomfortably warm, unconditioned workspace.
Later, they had a fire in their gas range, which he took as another omen.
Finally, this combined with a project they had already been discussing, enlarging the house to make more space when their in-laws visited. This I was already aware of. Getting rid of the pipes that were hastily layered throughout the basement would open at least a foot of wall space all around the perimeter, which was very appealing.
As with most home improvement projects, none of this was easy or timely, but in the end, he seemed truly happy with the results.
The Home Energy Yardstick
After this meeting, I compared our home’s energy use with Mark and Rhona's.
I utilized the EPA's Home Energy Yardstick, a tool designed to measure and compare household energy efficiency simply by entering the sum of a year’s worth of utility bills and a few basic questions about the home.
Even leaving out the solar energy that my neighbor’s home gives back to the grid, it scored an impressive 94, which on the EPA's scale ranges from zero to a hundred. Our home, in stark contrast, lagged by 90 points on this 100-point scale. This revelation was difficult to digest.
As my mind wandered through the technicalities of their home's transformation which included solar panels, an electric heat pump for heating and cooling, an electric hot water heat pump, an EV charger, and an even an induction oven, I found myself momentarily distracted by the thought of Mark's unshaven appearance at the bakery. It was a trivial detail, and it was Sunday afternoon, yet in the context of our discussion on energy efficiency, it sparked a curious thought. Could his somewhat rugged look be another aspect of his commitment to conserving energy? I briefly entertained the idea that he might be reducing his energy consumption by skipping showers.
However, this line of thought was quickly dispelled when I recalled Mark mentioning their electric heat pump water heater. Hot showers are fossil-free and cost practically nothing.
This approach underscores the fact that sustainability isn't about deprivation or discomfort; it's about making smart choices that align environmental goals with personal needs.
“It takes a lot of research to get ahead of things breaking down,” he’d told me, “but if you’ve made a plan…”
If you’ve planned, he said, you wouldn’t need to resort to replacing one fossil fuel appliance with another and getting locked in for the next 10 or fifteen years out of panic or pressure after something breaks.
This sounded reasonable and compassionate. Still, I couldn’t let a 90-point gap between our two homes stand.
The electrification of our heating, cooling, air-purifying and dehumidifying systems via a single, highly efficient electric heat pump would require a major transition, one no less significant than what one of the previous owners did when they transitioned our home from coal to natural gas.
Nothing is easy, but Mark and Rhona are not mythical neighbors portrayed on a graph on a utility bill. They live right around the corner from us, and their home was built not long after ours, more than 100 years ago.
When our family makes the decision to kick fossil fuels, this time we will have a real neighbor to thank. ##
A version of this article also appeared in the January issue of the Park Bugle.
