How to Electrify Everything in Your Home This Earth Month

At Sense, we’re inspired by visionary thinkers who look for smart solutions to big problems. Like so many people, we’re very concerned about climate change and we’ve found inspiration in the words of Saul Griffith, the author of Rewiring America, a handbook for winning the fight against climate change. Here’s what he says about the need to electrify homes:

The technical path to decarbonization is simply this: we must electrify (nearly) everything. We need a near 100% adoption rate of decarbonized solutions. It is the big purchases that count far more than the little ones. Your next car needs to be electric, your next furnace a heat pump, and you need solar on your roof. This is your personal zero–carbon infrastructure.

As an engineer and an expert in energy systems, I can squint at the data and see a way forward to keep carbon emissions down to a point where the earth will remain livable and beautiful for future generations. If we do it right, we’ll all save money and we’ll create millions of good new jobs and revitalize our economies.

Electrification is a simple and powerful idea. Move the utility grid toward reliance on low carbon sources of energy like wind, solar and hydro, while at the same time eliminating high carbon fuels in our lives, such as gasoline in cars and natural gas, heating oil and propane in home heating systems.

It’s a vision we share at Sense, and one that many people worldwide are working toward. In the meantime, how can you embrace electrification in your own home? Between a big vision and our day-to-day realities are dozens of choices along the path for each individual and their home.

So we were happy to come across a useful resource from Redwood Energy titled A Guide to All-Electric Retrofits of Single-Family Homes. The guide was produced for a nonprofit community organization in California, Menlo Spark, and it’s packed with practical information ranging from lists of electric products to summaries of studies by utilities.

California is in the forefront nationally in the move to electrification, and while other parts of the country are at different places in their progress toward carbon-free energy, we think this resource will be useful to anyone who is trying to learn more about electrification at home.

Redwood Energy has given us permission to share the guide with Sense customers and friends. Please let us know if you think it’s useful by sending email to press@sense.com or by reaching out to us on Twitter or Facebook.

Download the guide here.