Caitlin Peale Sloan lives in a typical New England Colonial house with sage green vinyl siding, a pitched roof, and a wraparound porch. It’s the kind of home that graces the streets of towns across New England, from Lewiston, Maine, to Malden, Massachusetts, where Peale Sloan happens to live.
But one thing sets Peale Sloan’s home apart: It is entirely carbon-free. In 2018, Peale Sloan, CLF’s vice president for Massachusetts, took the plunge and exchanged her home’s oil furnace for a central electric heat pump. Turning to Mass Save, she signed up for an energy audit and took advantage of incentives to help lower the cost of making the switch.
And she’s never looked back. Today, she efficiently cools her house on hot, humid days and warms her house on frigid ones, all for less than she paid before.
“Our electric bill is now lower than our electric-plus-oil bill was before the switch,” says Peale Sloan. “And that’s even after adding an electric car!”
Making the Switch to Electricity
If New Englanders hope to address the climate crisis, more of us must follow Peale Sloan’s example and upgrade our old oil boilers and gas furnaces to electric heat. After all, our buildings are responsible for nearly a third of all the carbon pollution overheating our planet.
But there are other good reasons, too. Oil and gas are not just dirty but subject to price shocks. That volatility can leave some people shivering in the cold as they keep thermostats low to avoid breaking their budgets. In addition, fossil fuels – never exactly cheap in New England – will become even more expensive as more people switch to clean energy. So, utility companies will spread the high costs of all those gas pipelines and other infrastructure across fewer and fewer customers – most likely those with the fewest resources to afford even higher utility bills.
Given this reality, the question is how can we make the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy accessible to everyone, no matter their income or whether they rent or own?
“Cleaning up our buildings is the next frontier as we push toward clean energy,” says Peale Sloan. “And it requires not only electrifying our buildings but ensuring the electricity they run on comes from clean energy sources like wind and solar. CLF is resolved to making this happen.”
Getting Our Carbon House in Order
CLF is working toward a future in which both homeowners and business owners have a variety of options for affordable, clean energy. Getting there will require an interplay of incentives, rebates, and tax credits to help make the transition affordable for everyone, including low- and middle-income families.
When it comes to upgrading our buildings, we need to encourage customers to move away from gas or oil heating in their homes. We also need to encourage them to move toward electricity – not other polluting fuels.
To address that first problem, states like Connecticut and Massachusetts have ended state incentives designed to lure customers into gas heating, a move CLF championed. And to tackle the second problem, most states, including Maine, offer residential gas customers thousands of dollars’ worth of incentives to install electric heat pumps. In northern New England, where many homeowners still heat with oil, the idea is that customers can move straight from oil to electricity. And this doesn’t just apply to residential homes – businesses can also use federal tax credits to install heat pumps between now and 2032.
Changing an Old (and Lucrative) Business Model
While these incentives are undoubtedly attractive to many home and business owners, a big part of the heating problem is getting oil and gas suppliers to relinquish their old, lucrative business models. That’s not so easy because if they can make money doing it, why stop? That’s where state “Clean Heat Standards” come into play. Done right, they incentivize suppliers to move off oil and gas, while helping spread out the cost of the transition for consumers.
The Massachusetts Clean Heat Standard, for example, under development since 2021, will require oil and gas companies to ramp down their fossil fuel business models. They will be required to sell clean heating methods like electric heat pumps or, for a time, offset their fossil fuel sales by purchasing credits. Money collected through those credits will help subsidize consumers switching from fossil fuel to full electric heat. It will also assist homeowners and renters looking to weatherize their homes or adopt other clean heat alternatives, like geothermal heat.
“We want to make it easier and cheaper for consumers to heat their homes efficiently,” explains Peale Sloan.
Making the Transition an Equitable One
Incentives must be offered for more than just heat pumps, though. They should also cover energy-saving measures like good insulation and clean appliances like electric stoves and water heaters. In a region known for old buildings, any program must make it easy for owners of older homes, including those in condos and multi-family buildings, to make the switch, too.
As more customers go all-electric, we also must remember that this transition will ultimately result in a smaller customer base for gas utilities. Those remaining gas customers will be forced to absorb higher costs, even when many are among those who can least afford it. CLF is pushing to keep this equity issue front of mind for policymakers and legislators.
Moving Toward Cleaner Electricity
Meanwhile, for Clean Heat Standards to have meaning, our electricity grid must be powered primarily by wind and solar, not fossil fuels. Utility companies must adapt their business models to state laws requiring a transition to clean energy. And any new buildings constructed from this moment forward should be all-electric – from appliances to heating.
“That’s a significant part of the work we’re doing,” says Peale Sloan. “We’re pushing to design programs that will work for many different kinds of customers and buildings.”
Transitioning our buildings to clean energy is complex work. It’s a challenge that requires precisely the kind of law and policy expertise CLF is known for. What we learn in one state, we apply to another, and so it will be as we electrify the housing sector. Peale Sloan’s all-electric house will likely be one of many in her neighborhood in a few years. And she and her family, like the rest of us, will enjoy a healthier home and a healthier planet because of it.