THERE’S A MAJOR CHANGE coming in how we heat our homes, power our toasters, cook our scrambled eggs, and drive from place to place. In fact, the transformation is already in its nascent stages in Colorado and the rest of the country. It will have a profound impact on the planet we call home, but in day-to-day life, we’ll hardly notice a difference—except to appreciate cheaper bills and zippier acceleration in our cars.
The changeover we’re talking about is beneficial electrification, or “moving from traditionally fossil-fuel-powered devices to their electric counterparts,” says Kyri Baker, a University of Colorado Boulder professor and fellow at CU’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, a research and education organization partnered with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That means weaning ourselves off internal combustion vehicle engines and gas furnaces, boilers, water heaters, fireplaces, dryers, and stoves in favor of fully electric vehicles (EVs), air-source heat pumps, water heaters, and cooktops—and the more clean energy we generate from solar panels to run them, the better. “Electrification is really the biggest thing we can do to drive down emissions as quickly as we need to in order to avoid the worst of the climate catastrophe,” says Gina McCrackin, climate action collaborative manager for the Walking Mountains Science Center in Avon, an environmental education and sustainability nonprofit. “It’s a massive deal.”
That’s not to say electric devices aren’t responsible for carbon emissions: A decent chunk of the electrons on Colorado’s grid right now come from burning fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal on the utility level, so electricity itself still has a footprint. But the juice coming out of your outlets is greener than you might think, and it’s getting more eco-friendly every year. In fact, Colorado and the state’s major electric utilities have committed to dramatically reducing the use of fossil fuels in favor of solar, wind, hydropower, and battery storage. By 2030, Xcel Energy plans to be using 80 percent renewable energy, and Holy Cross Energy, a smaller utility on the Western Slope, has pledged to produce 100 percent clean energy by the same year. This kind of rapid drawdown on
