By: Scott Allen, Energy Policy Specialist
Today’s Future of Gas workshop began with an announcement: between now and Dec. 6, 2024, the ICC will be accepting decarbonization pilot project ideas from interested stakeholders. It wasn’t immediately clear how these pilots could be put into effect–or indeed if they ever would be– but ICC staff suggested that it could materialize as part of the gas utilities’ long-term infrastructure plans that are due by the summer of 2025. If you’re interested in learning more about the pilot development process or submitting a project idea, visit the ICC’s updated website.
The remainder of the workshop focused on electrification as a decarbonization pathway. Iain Walker, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spoke about residential electrification and Nik Sawe, from Energy Innovation, covered industrial electrification. Both presentations were thorough, and I would encourage people to watch them. The Lawrence Berkeley slides covered concerns that CUB often hears from homeowners.
Residential Electrification
In my time at CUB, I’ve seen a lot of visual aids meant to help everyday consumers understand a pathway to a decarbonized, electrified home. Many of the visuals look nice, but often they say either way too much, or not enough. Iain Walker’s visual comes pretty close to being just right, including steps for everybody involved in the home electrification process, from residents to contractors to policymakers.
Most of these concepts are as straightforward as they seem. However, I’d like to draw attention to a couple that might require an adjustment in how we choose and use our appliances.
The second step of the outline above–”Low power electrification…”–is where Walker asked us to think about power vs. energy. What’s the difference? Power refers to the amount of energy an appliance requires to run, while energy refers to the amount of electricity an appliance uses over time. (We pay for energy on our monthly electric bills.)
Now consider power requirements for gas vs. electric appliances. As the graph below shows, electric appliances are less power intensive compared to gas appliances. That is especially true for water- and space-heating appliances.
Now think about this: Even though an electric range/oven requires a significant amount of power, it is used for shorter periods of time. On the other hand, space heating/cooling appliances are used for much longer periods of time–but electric versions are far less power intensive. And power intensity is further reduced for heat pump technology (air warming/cooling, water heaters and clothes dryers).
These concepts lead to the points Iain made in step 6: “Use integrated appliances,,,: One of the major problems many people encounter is inadequate electric service. Roughly half of the houses in the U.S. have 200 amp service, which is likely enough amperage to accommodate an electrified home plus EV charging. But older homes and/or homes that are also served by gas, may only have 100 amp service, making full electrification difficult. So what can we do about that? 
Increasing amperage can range from moderately expensive to really expensive (as in, this-job-is-worth-more-than-my-house expensive). It may even require a prohibitively expensive upgrade to the ComEd/Ameren-side of your electric service.
Iain offered some alternatives, appliance integration being one of them, but there are other options, such as meter collars, circuit sharing, smart breakers, smart panels, etc., or, in the future, battery-integrated ranges/ovens and thermal batteries. I don’t have room here to describe these alternatives, so I would again encourage readers to watch Iain’s presentation, and check out Redwood Energy’s Watt Diet Calculator.
The gist of this is that by understanding how and when we use appliances, we may be able to avoid costly service panel upgrades when electrifying. For example, through circuit sharing, (wiring two appliances to one circuit) we could run an oven/range and clothes dryer on one circuit as long as we’re willing to not cook and dry our clothes at the same time. But, as I always say, it’s not entirely on us as consumers to solve the world’s problems. We also need policies in place to facilitate and encourage behavior changes.
One example Iain used that I especially appreciated was EV charger incentives. We would all love to be able to charge our vehicles in the time it takes us to get dressed and find the keys (or whatever EVs require to start) so we might welcome huge rebates on level-two chargers, as California did. While I admit that it might be most convenient to charge up in a few minutes, it would be a challenge for our grid and our home panels to adapt to an influx of level 2 charging. But there are alternatives to dumping millions of dollars into subsidizing home fast charging. For example, what if we spent that money on building out public charging infrastructure? Better yet, why not ensure that we offset EV charging with renewable energy generation?
I don’t mean to oversimplify the discussion of home electrification, but I think we’re at a point where it’s time that policymakers, regulators and consumers start thinking seriously about how to invite and smooth this transition. Although we didn’t hear from utilities (gas or electric) in this workshop, I can imagine how they will eventually respond: Electric utilities will say “yes, we can do all of that, just give us a blank check,” while the gas utilities will say “electrification is impossible, and methane is safe.”
Neither one of them is right, and each is fighting for the interests of their shareholders. CUB, on the other hand, fights for consumers, and while we can see electrification as practical, possible, cleaner and more efficient, we also can’t deny that we have a long way to go to knock down the barriers to clean heat. The longer we put off the knocking down part of this, the longer we’ll have to deal with the massive costs of relying on gas in our homes.
What’s Next?
The next meeting is November 18 for Electrification Part 2. Check out our ICC Future of Gas landing page for more information.
Scott Allen, Energy Policy Specialist (he/him/his) — Scott joined CUB in February 2014 as the first downstate staff member, working first out of Hillsboro, then from Springfield, and now, Urbana. He focuses on outreach to Ameren customers and building relationships with downstate agencies and organizations. Scott also represents CUB at the downstate caucus of the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition and works on a range of energy and consumer-related legislative initiatives. His favorite aspect of working at CUB is not having to worry about whether or not his efforts have a negative impact on society. In his time off, Scott enjoys napping, exercising and eating.
