Earth Protect Blog

By Auden Schendler and Ted White

Writers on the Range

Thirteen-year-olds can AirDrop Simpsons memes from across the room, and artificial intelligence made chess masters like Garry Kasparov obsolete. But for all our technological advances, at home, we’re still cavemen.

Just as early man cooked raw meat over campfire coals, modern humans heat with flame, too, using natural gas drilled from the ground, even occasionally searing a poblano pepper on the range. “Og like gas. Gas keep Og warm.”

We can do better, in the same way that we’re moving away from generating electricity by burning flammable rocks. Instead, we’re making power with thin-film, solar photovoltaics, wind turbines made from fiberglass and advanced composites, and solar thermal molten-salt storage arrays in the desert.

To keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, we need to do a lot of things: slash transportation pollution, manage agricultural emissions, and more. But perhaps the most challenging task of all is to decarbonize buildings. The Rocky Mountain Institute notes that a tenth of U.S. carbon emissions come from burning fossil fuels — primarily gas —for heating and cooking in homes and businesses.

Nationally, $3.7 trillion worth of new construction is in process, and the top two states are in the West — California and Texas. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority will be heated with gas.

The best, and maybe only, way to decarbonize buildings is to replace Neanderthal heating methods with electric systems powered by renewables.

While it’s true that the grid isn’t entirely green yet, that transition is well underway, aided by trends that will displace existing coal even if demand grows. Nevada is an example: voters there amended its constitution this November to require half the state’s power to be renewable by 2030.

To fully decarbonize the building sector, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, states need “explicit electrification requirements and concrete phase-out strategies for gas in buildings” at a minimum.

Since we can’t count on federal action, and most states are not leading holistically, the only alternative is to change municipal codes. Municipalities need to adopt electrification codes, which can take a number of forms, from a straight ban on natural gas to more incentive-based programs.

The good news is that going all-electric is entirely doable. Developers where I live are already making it happen. Habitat for Humanity’s teacher housing in the town of Basalt avoided the cost of installing gas lines; teachers will cook their mac and cheese on advanced induction ranges. Aspen Skiing Company, where one of the authors of this column works, is building a 150-bed, four-story employee housing complex heated by electricity, complete with electric vehicle-charging stations. Rocky Mountain Institute’s office in Basalt is the highest performing building in the coldest climate zone in the U.S., and it uses no gas.

These success stories from high-end areas hardly scratch the surface of what’s possible. But their exceptionalism shows the transition will not happen on the free market, as many libertarian dreamers in the West hope. Discovering fire was a milestone for humankind, but rediscovering electricity will be a climate game changer.

Auden Schendler is senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company; Ted White is executive chair of Rocky Mountain Institute. This was written for writersontherange. org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.