For renewable energy to completely replace greenhouse gas–producing fossil fuels, we’ll need to switch out appliances in homes, offices, and other buildings that currently use oil, fossil gas (sometimes called ‘natural gas’) or LPG for new technologies that do the job using electricity. For example, the biggest fossil fuel users in buildings are furnaces and boilers, water heaters, and gas stoves. Replacing these with alternatives that run on electricity reduces greenhouse gas emissions (especially if the electricity comes from clean sources) but also increases comfort levels and improves indoor air quality. Replacing fossil fuel heating devices with efficient electric heat pumps can reduce overall energy consumption and save money, too.

Replacing appliances and upgrading electrical systems costs money upfront. That means that rebates, grants, and other funding sources from governments, utilities, or other entities can accelerate electrification.

However, electrifying everything could also increase the overall demand for electricity. As homes and businesses electrify, utilities will be called on to strengthen and reconfigure grid systems and to build energy storage into systems to ensure that electricity is available when their customers need it. This is costly and requires raw materials, which come with their own greenhouse gas emissions footprint and are often extracted unethically and dangerously from less wealthy countries, mainly in the Majority World. This is why it’s so important we also reduce the amount of energy we use, for example through retrofits, and take action to ensure green technologies, trade deals and organizations are designed in an equitable, just and non-extractive way. 

As more homes and businesses rely on electricity to provide all of their energy services, grid reliability and energy storage will become increasingly important. If those buildings have been designed to be highly efficient, they can retain the desired indoor environmental conditions with very little energy input. This makes the building more resilient to extreme weather or power disruptions, and may open opportunities to “shift” electrical loads to convenient times of the day when more carbon-free electricity is available—a win-win for grid operators and for increasing the use of variable renewable energy.

When you take this action, increase your Energy Demand by 1 and remove 1 Buildings Emissions token from your player board.
You may take this action once per Regulation tag in this card's stack each round.

• Electricity (Project Drawdown)

• Electrification (Wikipedia)

• Electrify Everything in Your Home (Rewiring America) 

• Power Shift Africa

• Consider replacing your appliances that run on gas or oil with electrical appliances, retrofit your home and use less energy where possible and safe to do so.

• Encourage your utility and local government to invest in renewable energy, grants for low income households to retrofit their homes and to roll-out electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

• Encourage lawmakers to provide incentives for electrifying everything and legislate out the use of and funding for fossil fuels.

• Protest unethical extraction of materials and resources from the majority world, and ask politicians to take action on this critical subject.