This month’s focus is on the second of the seven areas needed to reach zero emissions by 2050––decarbonizing your home.
What exactly is decarbonization? As the word implies, it’s the removal or reduction of carbon dioxide emitted into the environment, in this case, the removal of appliances used in your home that generate CO2 (i.e., oil-burning furnaces and propane stoves) or the significant reduction of their use.
In the United States, buildings consume about 40% of the energy we use, and residential buildings, like our homes in Harvard, use about 20% of the energy. Of those residential buildings, about 50% are heated using fossil fuels (the number is even higher in Harvard at 65%).
Start with conserving energy
For most of us, the best way to move toward full decarbonization is gradually, and the best place to start is to understand ways to conserve energy and improve efficiency. Areas to look into include your lighting, thermal envelope, and HVAC systems.
For lighting, incandescent bulbs are still the cheapest option, but they’re less efficient and have shorter life spans than other options. Compact fluorescent lamp bulbs (CFLs) or light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are more expensive. Still, they take a fraction of the energy to power and have longer lifespans, compensating for the higher initial cost. My recommendation here is straightforward: Switch to CFLs and LEDs in your home wherever possible.
Next, ensure your house is well insulated and eliminate air leaks wherever they exist: windows, doors, floors, outside walls, HVAC ducts, and the unions of walls and roofs. Plan to check these areas annually. For windows, a simple candle test works well. To do the test, trace your window frame with a lit candle. A calm flame signifies that the envelope around your window is working well. If the flame flickers, there’s a leak, and air is escaping from your home. Fix all these leaks to improve energy efficiency and reduce utility bills. For those like me who like new tools, there’s a fantastic product called Aerobarrier that can help you check the overall thermal envelope around your house. Check it out at https://aeroseal.com/aerobarrier/.
Next, use software to control the energy usage in your home intelligently. It’s easy now to automate turning things off when not in use. Do so wherever possible. Great smart thermostats and smart plugs are widely available for a reasonable cost. Use them generously throughout your house.
Go electric
When it’s time for new appliances, consider going all electric. In Harvard, most of us purchase electricity generated from renewable sources, meaning anything you power in your home electrically generates zero emissions. The trick in the future is to power more and more of our homes with this renewable energy. In Harvard, we can fully decarbonize our homes by electrifying everything.
The best way for homeowners to do this is to switch to all-electric appliances and systems. These days, electric water heaters, HVAC heat pump systems, and induction cooktops are more efficient than their gas and oil equivalents. Replacing your current systems with these systems will save you money in the long run, and there are great incentives to switch to them today, as detailed below.
Let’s take a look at heat pumps. There are two major types, air source (think mini-splits or ducted) and ground source (think geothermal). They move the heat from outside (from the air or ground) to the inside of your home––even in extremely cold conditions––by judicious use of refrigerants, and they do so in an efficient way, often outputting three to five units of energy for each unit input into the system. By comparison, traditional oil-burning furnaces output, at best, .95 units of energy for each unit input into the furnace. Here are some numbers to review when considering a new heat pump system: For a family of four in Harvard making $100,000 per year, rebates and tax credits of approximately $10k are available, a substantial portion of the cost of installing a new heat pump system. At the first link below, you can enter your family’s specific information and calculate your potential savings.
Rebates and credits
And while you’re considering upgrading to a heat pump, you may also want to consider taking advantage of the number of rebates and credits available in other home-related areas. Here’s what’s available to the same family of four mentioned above:
- Electric panel rebate: $4,000 coming in late 2023
- Electric stove rebate: $840 in late 2023
- Heat pump water heater: $1750 in late 2023
- Heat pump clothes dryer: $840 in late 2023
- Weatherization: $2,000 in late 2023
- Efficiency rebates: $4,000 in late 2023
- Battery storage installation: 30% tax credit now
- Rooftop solar installation: 30% tax credit now
For more information on decarbonizing your home, check out these links:
- At www.rewiringamerica.org/app/ira-calculator, there’s a calculator to help families understand rebates and incentives available to them.
- www.masssave.com/residential/rebates-and-incentives#heating-and-cooling, contains an explanation of rebates and incentives available to Massachusetts residents.
- https://neep.org/sites/default/files/resources/ASHP_buyingguide_5.pdf is a buying guide to help families go electric.
Next month, I’ll focus on electric transportation.
Rich Marcello is a novelist and a member of the Climate Initiative Committee. In writing his latest novel, he spent several years researching the climate crisis.
