This post is in commentary to a recent Washington Post article
– America’s great home heating divide, visualized. The article shows
home heating sources in detail on a map of the U.S. and how they vary by
region. There are several reasons for these variations. The sources of home
heating are natural gas, electricity, propane (or more accurately LP gas), home
heating oil, and wood. I have used all these sources for home heating at one
time or another with the exception of home heating oil, although when I moved
into one house there was an oil furnace there. However, we decided not to use
it and sold it, using a second wood burner instead. After a year of heating
with wood and one chimney fire, we installed LP gas piping and unvented heaters
and later only occasionally supplemented with wood in the fall and spring. The
LP gas under this setup works great and is entirely immune to power outages, which
are more common out here in the “boonies.” In the next place I heat with an
air-source heat pump. The cost savings are significant and great but when the
power is out there is no heat and when it gets very cold, below 10-15 deg F, it
does not perform adequately and must be supplemented with another electric
heater and/or a small propane heater. The air conditioning costs are very low
and quite satisfactory.
The graph below
is perhaps a bit misleading since it suggests that electric heat may be more
widespread. However, the second graph below shows that natural gas is the
dominant heating source by far. If one adds all the hydrocarbons together: natural
gas, propane, and heating oil, then hydrocarbons, or fossil fuels, make up 56%
of U.S. home heating vs. 40% for electricity. If one then considers that
natural gas, coal, and oil make up about 61% of U.S. electricity grid power,
then one might say that fossil fuels are really responsible for about 80.4% of
home heating, with natural gas alone making up about 62.2%. I mention this
since the Washington Post article talks about shifting away from fossil fuels,
presumably to electricity, which is currently 61% fossil fuels.
Prevailing
Home Heating Sources: Red = home heating oil. Purple = natural gas. Light blue
= propane. Gold = electricity. Brown = wood. (The map is interactive in the
article and can be zoomed to see different areas in more detail). Source: America’s
great home heating divide, visualized. John Muyskens, Shannon Osaka, and Naema
Ahmed. Washington Post. March 6, 2023. How
Americans heat their homes, from electric heat pump to natural gas - Washington
Post
Energy
sources of U.S. Home Heating. Source: 2017-2021 American Community Survey.
Electrification
makes sense in some areas and situations, less in others. In the U.S. Southeast
where winter temperatures are generally mild, electric heat has long been
favored. Cold snaps do happen, but typically electric heat is enough to take care
of them. However, even there during the cold snap of late December 2022 the
grid was stressed and rolling outages had to be implemented in the territories
of Duke Energy and Tennessee Valley Authority. That suggests that even there where
winter demand is generally lowest, the current grid is not adequately prepared
to handle extreme cold snaps. In Texas, with the cold snap of 2020 one might
argue that the natural gas system was ill-prepared, and while that is true, if
that increased demand had to be met with electricity alone the situation would
have been magnitudes worse. The problem there is that the natural gas system is
not adequately weatherized. Electrification does make sense economically in the
U.S. Northeast where expensive, polluting, and high carbon emissions home
heating oil is a major source of home heating. However, it can be too cold for
heat pumps so some of the cost advantage is lost by needing a backup heat
source in cold events. In some areas heat pumps may be a good choice for replacing
propane heat which is a little bit more expensive than natural gas.
With ambitious
pledges and mandates for lowering carbon emissions the push to electrify home
heating, building heating, and transportation could result in significant
increases in electricity demand. The U.S. Northeast in New England currently powers
46% of the grid with natural gas and 11% with renewables. According to
decarbonization plans they want to change that by 2040 to 12% natural gas and
56% renewables. That is a very tall order. In addition to this switch, it is expected
that some nuclear, coal, oil, and hydro plants will be retired. Also, in
addition will be the increased demand from electrified heating and transport.
Thus far, offshore wind, the main hope for the switch, is behind schedule. In
New England as of the end of 2021, about 39% of home heating was from natural gas,
about 33% from heating oil, about 16% from electricity, about 8% from propane, and
about 3% from wood. ISO-New England predicts that by 2031, a little less than 8
years from now, the shift to heat pumps will increase demand from 68MW
currently to 1899MW. The predicted demand increase from EVs is from 38MW to
1535MW. In total from those two sources the change is expected to go from 106MW
to 3434MW, or 3328MW in new demand. The New England grid is already stressed.
Winter reliability has been achieved for several years now by burning oil in
power plants (often triggering air quality alerts), by importing expensive LNG (often
on the spot market from foreign sources due to nonsensical Jones Act requirements),
and by paying a lot more for the natural gas that does come by pipeline. The
result is very high electricity costs, especially in the winter. If cold snaps
would come that are colder and longer the grid may not be able to handle them.
This is a problem in other areas as well, but accelerating electrification will no
doubt exacerbate the problem. With an increase of intermittent sources on the
grid the reliability will be stressed even further. Just to integrate the
planned increases the grid will need to be upgraded significantly, which is a
slow and cumbersome process. The reality is that those natural gas plants will
likely remain operational as the renewables are increased, just less utilized.
That will make the natural gas generation necessarily less efficient, more carbon
intense, and more expensive to operate and maintain.
The WaPo
article also mentions the irony of the states that have high natural gas home
heating being the ones advocating for natural gas bans in new homes and buildings.
The non-profit advocacy group Rewiring America is advocating for natural
gas bans and for heat pumps to replace fuel oil and propane, although I have
read recently that their leaders have started quite a few well-funded for-profit
companies to be aided by those pushes and by the IRA. The IRA does have tax
credit provisions to help with heat pump installation. I will note, however,
that I saved a few thousand dollars, by using a contractor that was qualified
with heat pumps but not certified under the federal program available at the
time in 2018. My installation was significantly cheaper than it would have been
with the other installers even with the rebates at that time. I am not sure if
this is still the case but even with tax credits the upfront costs can price
many would-be switchers out of the market. Another issue of some concern is the
lifetime of an air source heat pump (I was told 12-15 years and I’m hoping longer)
vs. the lifetime of another type of electric furnace, a natural gas, or a
propane furnace, which can exceed 30 years in some cases. I do like its low
operating cost compared to the previous electric furnace, especially the low-cost
A/C, as well as its lower noise.
References
America’s
great home heating divide, visualized. John Muyskens, Shannon Osaka, and Naema
Ahmed. Washington Post. March 6, 2023. How
Americans heat their homes, from electric heat pump to natural gas - Washington
Post
The
Heat Is On - Is New England Headed For An Electricity Supply Crisis? Housely
Carr. March 6, 2023. RBN Energy. The
Heat Is On - Is New England Headed for an Electricity Supply Crisis? | RBN
Energy
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